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APR 8 1899 







Oi\ illl. KAMIARl . 



Hurrah ! hurrah ! it is our home where'er thy colors fly, 
We win with thee the victory, or in thy shadow die ! " 




THE 

APR 8 1899 

AMERICAN SOLDIER 



BEING THE STORY OF THE FIGHTING-MAN 
OF AMERICA, FROM CONQUISTADOR TO 
ROUGH RIDER ; FROM 1492 TO 1900 * * ♦ 



ELBRIDGE S. BROOKS 

AUTHOR OF "THE AMERICAN SAILOR," "THE AMERICAN INDIAN," "THE TRUE 

STORY OF THE UNITED STATES," "THE CENTURY BOOK 

FOR YOUNG AMERICANS," ETC., ETC. 



NEW AND REVISED EDITION 



BOSTON 
LOTHROP PUBLISHING COMPANY 









295fi7 



Copyright, 1889, 

BY 
D. LOTHROP COMPANY. 

Copyright, 1899, 

BY 

LOTHROP PUBLISHING COMPANY. 







PREFACE. 



The simple story of the American soldier has never yet been told. Whoever 
wishes to know him as a man must study numerous confusing episodes, 
search through voluminous histories or sift out the man from the material in 
the crowding records of innumerable battles. 

This is more labor than the busy American cares to undertake, much as 
he may delight in the records of American valor and American endeavor. 
It is to attempt this for him, to draw from the mass of material already in 
print the character and achievements of the fighting man of America even 
from the earliest times and to present them in consecutive and connected 
narrative that this book has been undertaken. 

The description of battles- and the causes of wars have not been entered 
into. These may be found and studied in detail in any one of the many 
excellent histories of the United States with which the libraries and homes of 
America abound. In this book the American soldier as an individual is 
depicted for the enlightenment and inspiration of Americans — young and old. 

War is a terrible necessity. Looked at from the standpoint of humanity 
there is about it neither picturesqueness, nobility, romance nor delight; it is 
but the emphasis of man's inhumanity to man. And yet there is another 
point of view. War has been in the history of the world alike civilizer, peace- 
maker and uplifter. There could have been no progress for the race had the 
element of strife been lacking. The efforts of those heroic souls 

" Who have dared for a high cause to suffer, resist, fight — if need be to die," 

have rung the death-knell of tyranny and moved the world forward toward a 
broader freedom. 

And so, through all the 5'ears that have witnessed the evolution of the 
American Republic, the American soldier has been a prime factor, in this 
development. His valor has illumined history, his steadfastness has redeemed 
failure, his loyalty has glorified success. It is for us as Americans to remem- 
ber our debt to the heroes of Louisburg and Quebec, of Lexington and 
Saratoga and Yorktown, of Lundy's Lane and New Orleans, of Shiloh and 
Gettysburg and Appomattox, of El Caney and San Juan and Manila. Without 
their efforts there would have been no nation of freemen with sons ready to 
defend its honor and its hfe, no America to stand well at the fore to make its 
name the symbol of progress, protection, and glory. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

AN OVERTURE OF STRIFE ••• II 

CHAPTER II. 

THE CONQUISTADORES , , 32 

CHAPTER III. 

COLONIAL FIGHTING-MEN 56 

CHAPTER IV. 

MINUTE-MEN AND CONTINENTALS ••• 78 

CHAPTER V. 

SOLDIERS OF LIBERTY , . 98 

CHAPTER VI. 

THE TROOPS OF DISCONTENT ,, 121 

CHAPTER VII. 

A LEADERLESS WAR I43 

CHAPTER VIII. 

WARS AND RUMORS OF WAR I66 

CHAPTER IX. 

OVER THE MEXICAN BORDER I9O 

vii 



viii CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER X. 

HORSE, FOOT AND DRAGOON 214 

CHAPTER XI. 

BOYS OF 'sixty-one 232 

CHAPTER Xn. 

FROM SHILOH TO APPOMATTOX 255 

CHAPTER Xni. 

BOOTS and saddle 2/5 

CHAPTER XIV. 
the boys of '98 289 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Page. 

On the ramparts L. J. Bridgman. Frontis. 

Initial — A war chief of the Mound-Builders ii 

Indians attacking the mounds ........... 14 

" He halted and turned toward the enemy " . . . L. J. Bridgman . . 21 . 

" Death to the Mun-dua ! " 27 

Initial — A Conquistador 32 

De Soto 34 

" For Santiago and Spain ! " ........... 37. 

Coronado's march . . . . . . . £. /. Bridginan . . 43 -- 

The first white man ............. 53 

The revolt of the train-bands ..... /F. T. Sitiedley . . 60 

Franklin as a private . . . . . . . L. /. Brtdgnian . . 65=^ 

A muster of Colonial militia on Boston Common . . F. T. Merrill . . 73 

" They hung on the skirts of the retreat " . . . Hy. Sa-ndha7n . . 82 

Green Mountain Boys on the march . . . . L. J. Bridgmajt . . 85 

The minute-men ........ //y. Sand/iam . . 87^ 

" The British are coming ! " . . . . . . L. J. Briagman . . 93 

The Cambridge elm ............. 96 

The battle of Oriskany ............ 103 

Marion and his men . . . . , . . L.J. Bridgnum . . 105-^ 

Washington reviewing the Continental Army 112 

{Frotn a painting by J. S. Thompson.') 

A garrison of two . . . . . . . L. /. Bridgman . . 117. 

" Peace by no means brought satisfaction " ......... 123 

" No fees, no executious, no sheriff ! " .......... 129 

Sentinel and ploughman ............ 133 

The battle of Tippecanoe . . . . . . L. J. Bridgman . . 135 

Anthony Wayne .............. 139 

Initial — James Wilkeson ............ 143 

At work on the fortifications in 1812 .......... 147 

Captain Hindman at P'ort George .... L. J. Bridgman . . 153'' 

Packenham's charge ............. 158 



X LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 

Andrew Jackson ....*. 163 

The backwoods soldiers . 169 

In the " anti-rent war " 182 

Caricaturing the militia L. J. Bridgman . . 185^^ 

The battle of Buena Vista L. /. Bridg7nan . . 201- 

Marcy's perilous march . . . . . . L. /. Bridgtmm . . 223— 

Good-by 2:5 

Our brother the enemy L. /. Bridgman . . 241 

In the recruiting office 246 

Working for the soldiers 251 

Initial — The heat of battle Kemble .... 255 

Stannard's charge at Gettysburg ........... 258 

" Do you want to live forever ? " ........... 263^.-- 

Morgan's raiders 267 

After the battle Kemble . . . . 271 

" The home-coming of the Southern soldiers " . . Kemble .... 278 

Custer's last stand . . . . . . . L. J. Bridgman . . 283„, 

At Guasimas 299 



THE AMERICAN SOLDIER. 



THE AMERICAN SOLDIER. 



CHAPTER L 



AN OVERTURE OF STRIFE. 



AW:^CK,eP 

of the \ 




ITHIN that section of South- 
ern Ohio where now stretches 
the pleasant County of Ross, 
there was enacted, a thousand 
years ago, a strange and stir- 
ring scene. 

Against the almost inky 
blackness of an autumn nio;ht 
blazed up suddenly, with 
flash and flare, the climbing 
flame of a beacon fire. Its 
fitful glare, swayed, now this way and now that, by the keen 
November blasts, threw into sudden relief a looming watch- 
tower and a long line of frowning battlements that, topped 
with a ragged palisade, crested a sharply rising hill and 
stretched far away into the encircling gloom. 

Another and yet another flaming beacon answer the summons 
of fire. One to the right and one to the left, and each a mile 
or more away from the central beacon, they light up the inky 



12 AN OVERTURE OF STRIFE. 

nieht. There comes a stir behind those walls of stone. The 
sharp, quick rallying cry sounds out. A long line of hurry- 
ing forms spring to the solid ramparts, which, rising to the 
height of ten feet, and with a width of more than thirty 
feet, afford standing place and fighting room for an army of 
defenders. 

Behind the palisades they gather, wary and watchful, with 
bows drawn and spears poised for the fling. Schooled to the 
ways of savage warfare the night surprise has found them 
ready and alert. They live upon their arms. 

From the watchers on the outer towers comes now the shrill 
cry of warning. They see the foe. Beyond the flickering rim 
of lisht a mass of crowdino: forms has been descried — a host 
of naked, be-feathered warriors, dodging here and there behind 
the giant tree-trunks, or drawing stealthily nearer to the rising 
wall of that towering hill-fort. 

And now with a long, rising whoop of defiance that grows 
to a terrible and blood-curdling yell as, one after another, 
the myriad throats of that beleaguering host take up the 
cry, the mass of naked warriors rush madly within the glare 
of the beacon fire and discharge a storm of arrows against 
the palisades. From the watchful defenders comes an answer- 
ing shower of arrows and of spears, while through the central 
entrance swarm out in sudden sortie an attacking force of 
stalwart fiQ-htino^ men. 

These defenders of the beleaguered fort are dressed, each, in 
a belted blouse of woven cloth that falls nearly to the knee. 
The left arm of each long-haired soldier upholds a matted shield ; 
his right hand firmly grasps a long and deadly spear. Their 
bravest war-chief leads the sortie out. A leathern buckler, 
edged with silver and gleaming with its copper boss, protects 



AN OVERTURE OF STRIFE. 13 

his breast ; an iron sword, broad and sharply-pointed, waves 
above his head in encouragement and command, and at his side 
dangles its copper scabbard. 

In close array and with something of martial order the sol- 
diers of the fort dash on to the charge, following the feathered 
plume and brandished sword of their gallant chief. Straight 
into that host of beleaguering savages they dash, regardless of 
the flying arrow and the whirling hatchet. Then, with yell and 
whoop, true to the tactics of savage strife, the horde of naked 
assailants disappears in the gloom only to swarm again before 
some less defended point — there to let fly their cloud of arrows 
at the defenders behind the palisades. 

Through the long night again and again are the assault and 
the defense, the sortie, flight and fresh attack renewed. Then, 
with the dawn, the beleaguering host fades away into the forest 
fastnesses. And, as the morning sun rises above that Ohio hill, 
the wearied warriors within the fortified town prostrate them- 
selves toward the east and offer their thanks and sacrifices to 
the great sun-god who has given them the victory. 

Thus, then, as the curtain of the centuries is rolled aside for 
us, do we obtain a glimpse of the earliest American soldier — 
the earliest, at least, worthy the name of soldier, who with some- 
thing of order and the show and circumstance of war could do 
such desperate battle in defense of fortress and of home. It 
is, for us, an insight into the ways and manners of that long- 
vanished and mysterious people known now but vaguely under 
the uncertain name of the Mound Builders — a name eiven 
only because of the fast disappearing ruins of the marvelous 
works of engineering skill that they so long and valiantly 
defended against the ceaseless assaults of a relentless savagery. 

The fighting-man is as old as the human race. The com- 



14 



AN OVERTURE OE STRIEE. 



bative quality in men and nations has never lacked a represen- 
tative. Wherever rivalry has been engendered or ambition has 
had birth the man of war has ever and always resulted. " All 
antiquity," says Renan, " was cruel." No nation exists that does 
not rest on the foundation stones of strife and blood. 

The American people form no exception to the rule. Their 




INDIANS ATTACKING THE MOUNDS. 



prehistoric story is written in strife and told in eras of conflict. 
Evolved from savagery through long centuries of struggle and 
of warfare the early Americans were ever at strife and grew, 
apparently, only through the law of the survival of the fittest. 



AN OVERTURE OF STRIFE. 15 

The strons: man and the war chief were leaders and rulers in 
our prehistoric days. 

Invaded mound and rifled tumulus yield, always, among 
their meager spoil the inevitable arrow-head of flint or chalced- 
ony or hard obsidian. The shell-heaps and " kitchen-middens," 
that speak of a stage of human existence yet nearer to the 
brute, disclose, amid their crumbling dust, hatchet and arrow- 
head, dagger and knife of rough-hewed stone, while, alongside 
the half-fossilized human remains that speak of an almost fab- 
ulous antiquity for the American race, have been found the 
stone war-club and the beveled lance-head that tell, ever, the 
self-same story of conflict and of blood. 

Dating thus backward to the very beginning of things the 
American fighting-man has always been a product of American 
soil. There can, however, but little real identity attach to his 
story, until, from the uncertain testimony of the Western 
mounds and from the more credible legends of the red Indian 
who was the heir of all the ages that here preceded him we 
obtain our first tangible impression of the early American 
"soldier." 

And a soldier this same red barbarian was, despite his forest 
tactics and his ignorance of the real " art " of war. 

War was the Indian's second nature ; it was his business, his 
pastime and his life. To attain the eagle's feather was his 
highest aim ; to achieve the seat of the war chief by the suf- 
frages of his comrades was the end of all ambition. The brave 
at home was but a lazy fellow, scorning manual labor and deem- 
ing toil as unsuited to one whose duty it was to become a hero. 

But on the war-path and in the forest foray he was a far dif- 
ferent creature. Then, no toil was too severe, no exertion was 
too harsh. Intent on the surprise and capture of his hereditary 



i6 AN OVERTURE OF STRIFE. 

foeman he brought into play all his knowledge of woodcraft, all 
his varied schooling in skill and cunning. With untiring 
patience and with an ability that was almost genius he read the 
language of broken twig and trodden grass, of disturbed stream 
and of uncertain trail. The story of the intertribal wars of the 
American Indian, could this but be fitly told, would possess as 
much of courage, of endurance and of artifice as is to be found 
in any mythical tradition of Troy's ensanguined plains or in 
the stirring legends of the Golden Fleece. 

The Roman Horatius, swimming the turbid Tiber, is fully 
paralleled by that brave Ojibway father who, burning to revenge 
the death of his warrior son, fiuno: himself — " with his harness on 
his back " — into the vaster waters of the " Great Lake " (Supe- 
rior) and swam a distance of over two miles, from the island of 
La Pointe to the mainland, to join in the deadly battle that his 
tribe was waging against the hostile Dakotas. 

Ga-geh-djo-wa the Seneca — the warrior with the heron's 
plume in his crest — is the fiery Henry of Navarre of the 
American forests. The braves of the warlike Iroquois outshone 
in valor and endurance the legionaries of a triumphant Caesar, 
the spearmen of an Attila or an Alexander. " When you go 
to war," runs the old Ute proverb, " every one you meet is an 
enemy; kill all ! " Was not this, too, the policy of a Hannibal, 
a Pompey and an Alaric } 

Among the Indians in the old days there were no impress- 
ments, there were no conscripts. All were volunteers. The 
American warrior was a free man. 

But the enlistment was unique. The plan of operations was 
according to a set form, as binding as were ever those of any 
marshal of France or any paladin of Spain. Let this glimpse 
at the military life of the Omahas show us the aboriginal 



AiV OVERTURE OF STRIFE. 17 

American soldier as he existed among the pre-Columbian tribes 
of the higher order of intelligence. 

Wa-ba-ska-ha the Ponka had suffered a o-reat wrono- at the 
hands of the Pawnees. His honor and the honor of his tribe 
demanded swiftest vengeance. But the initial move could 
only come from Wa-ba-ska-ha himself. He and none other 
must organize a war party. 

With his face bedaubed with clay, to indicate his grief, Wa- 
ba-ska-ha wandered among the lodges of his people. And as 
he wandered he cried, thus and often, to Wa-kan-da, the protect- 
ing spirit of the Omahas : " O, Wa-kan-da! though others have 
injured me, do thou help me ! " And the people, hearing his 
appeal, said: "What! would you lead out a war-party, Wa-> 
ba-ska-ha.'* W'ho has wronged you ? Let us hear your story.'' 
And then he would recite his wronos until all his tribe was ac- 
Cjuainted with his story. 

Thereupon four messengers, friends of W^a-ba-ska-ha, ran as 
criers throug'h the village, calling out the name of each warrior 
and bidding him come to an assembly. And when all the chiefs 
and warriors were gathered together, the war-pipe was filled 
and Wa-ba-ska-ha, stretching out his hands in appeal to his 
people, said, " Pity me, my brothers ; do for me as you think 
best." 

Then said the chief who filled the sacred pipe : " If you are 
willing, O warriors, for us to take vengeance on the Pawnees, 
put this pipe to your lips. If you are not willing, put it not to 
your lips." And exery man placed the sacred pipe to his lips 
and smoked it. Thus thev volunteered for the foravi and 
Wa-ba-ska-ha was glad. Then said the chief, " Now, make a 
final decision. Say you, O warriors, when shall we take this 
venoreance ? " And one of the warriors made answer: "O 



i8 ^iV OVERTURE OE STRIFE. 

chief, the summer conies ; let us eat our food. When the leaves 
fall we will take vengeance on the Pawnees." 

This was the voice of the whole assembly. But Wa-ba-ska-ha 
would not let the matter rest. Through the whole summer, by 
day and bv night, and even while they accompanied the people 
on the summer hunt, his four messengers, or captains, were 
continually crying out : " O Wa-kan-da ! pity me ! Help me in 
that which keeps me angry." And they would fast through all 
the day ; only in tlie night would they eat and drink. 

Then, when the hunt was over, Wa-ba-ska-ha gave the war- 
party a feast at his lodge; and tlie four captains sat before the 
entrance while two messengers sat on either side the door. 
And as they ate and drank and sang the sacred war-songs they 
determined upon what day the war-path should be taken. And 
the five sacred bags, filled with red, blue and yellow feathers, 
and consecrated to the war-god, were distributed among the 
chiefs or leaders of the clans of the tribe. 

The day having been set the leaders of the war-party selected 
their lieutenants and assigned to each of tlie chiefs of the tribe 
a company of twenty warriors. Secretly and at night all the 
warriors who had volunteered for the fight slipped out of their 
lodges and each company met its chief at a rendez\-ous agreed 
upon. Here they blackened their faces with charcoal or mud 
and fasted for four days. And when the four days were past 
they washed their faces, put plumes in their hair and gathering 
around the principal captains watched the opening of the 
sacred bags. Twenty policemen were appointed to keep the 
stragglers to their duty and four scouts were sent ahead, keep- 
ing from two to four miles in advance of the party. 

Directly after breakfast the war-party commenced its march. 
First came two of the minor captains, bearing the sacred bags. 



AN OVERTURE OF STRIFE. 19 

A hundred yards behind marched the chiefs of the tribe, and 
following them came the warriors. Frequent halts for rest 
were made but, when resting, the party must always keep 
close together to avoid surprise. 

When the scouts had met the captains at a point agreed 
upon and made their report as to traces of the enemy or of 
game other scouts were appointed in their place and the march 
went on. 

So, under bright skies or beneath cloudy ones, the Ponkas 
advanced toward their vengeance. Along the forest trails and 
across the grassy meadows, ablaze with the nodding flowers of 
the early fall, they pressed straight on. But neither sky nor 
flower won any thought from them. And as they neared their 
foe those who were hot for revenge grew still more fierce and 
counseled their comrades to valorous deeds. Chief among 
these was Wa-ba-ska-ha ; for as the warriors marched he 
sprang in a furious dance before and around them, singing thus: 

" O make us quicken our steps ! 

make us quicken our steps ! 
Ho, O war-chief ! When I see him 

1 shall have my heart's desire ! * 

O war-chief, make us quicken our steps ! " 

And after he had thus suno- he shouted to the listeninsf 
warriors : " Ho, brothers, I have said truly that I shall have my 
heart's desire ! Truly, brothers, they shall not detect me at all. 
I am rushing on without any desire to spare a life. If I meet 
one of the foe I will not spare him." 

Each night when they camped for rest and sleep the four 
scouts would go out about a mile from the camping ground — 
one toward the enemy's country, one to the rear, and one to 
either side of the camp. And,^ before the warriors lay down to 



2 AN OVERTURE OF STRIFE. 

sleep, the ''mikasi'^ or coyote dance, to keep up the spirits of 
all, would be engaged in by all except the captains. 

Before sunrise, each morning, the camp was awake ;• break- 
fast was hastily eaten and the day's march resumed. At last 
the wary scouts far in advance sighted the village of the enemy 
and hastening back made their report. The sacred bags were 
opened, the scalp yell was raised and each warrior boasted anew 
of how he should conduct himself when he met the foe. And 
here, as the height of courage, Na-jin-ti-ce, the chief, the friend 
of Wa-ba-ska-ha, changed his name before the battle and bade 
the crier so proclaim it. And the crier, lifting his hands first 
toward the skies and then dropping them toward the. earth, 
thus proclaimed it : " Thou deity on either side, hear it ; hear 
ye that he has taken another name. He will take the name 
Nu-da-nax-a (Cries-for-the-war-path), halloo ! Ye big head-lands, 
I tell you and send my voice that ye may hear it, halloo ! Ye 
clumps of buffalo grass, I tell you and send it to you that ye 
may hear it, halloo ! Ye big trees, I tell 3^ou and send it to 
you that ye may hear it, halloo ! Ye birds of all kinds that 
walk and move on the ground, I tell you and send it to you 
that ye may hear it, halloo ! Ye small animals of different sizes, 
that walk and move on the ground, I tell you and send it to you 
that ye may hear it, halloo! Thus have I sent to you to tell 
you, O ye animals ! Right in the ranks of the foe will he kill 
a very swift man and come back after holding him, halloo ! 
He has thrown away the name Na-jin-ti-ce and will take the 
name Nu-da-nax-a, halloo ! " 

Now that the enemy had been discovered all was interest and 
action. The scouts were sent forward to count the lodges and 
discover whether the foemen were asleep or awake — for it was 
nightfall. Then one of the chi(^s went himself to make a final 






• V 



111. HALTED AND TURNED TOWARD THE ENEMY. 



I 



AN OVERTURE OE STRIFE. 23 

examination. And at midnight, when all were ready, they 
moved stealthily forward ; going by twenties, each warrior hold- 
ing the hand of the man next him, they crawled toward the 
Pawnee village. Within arrow-shot of the village they halted, 
talking in whispers and exhorting each other to deeds of 
bravery. Just at daybreak, the leading war-chief drew his bow 
and sent an arrow toward the sleeping foe. Its flight could 
be distinctly seen by all the watching warriors. The time for 
the attack had arrived. The war-chief waved the sacred bae 
four times toward the enemy, he shouted his war-cry and at once 
the warriors, raising the scalp-yell, let fly their arrows. 

That terrible yell, familiar to Indian ears, roused the 
sleepers. Snatching at their ever-ready weapons they rushed 
out into the chill morning air. Too late ! The surprise was 
complete. Every surrounding tree-trunk sheltered a Ponka 
brave. Now from this quarter, now from that dashed out a 
hostile foeman to strike down or capture an unwary Pawnee, 
First to strike down and first to drag away his fallen foeman 
was Wa-ba-ska-ha. His vens^eance had bes^un. 

For an instant the Pawnees gained the advantage. Mass- 
ing themselves for a rush they dashed against their enemy 
discharging their arrows as they ran. 

The Indian could seldom stand before a combined assault. 
His tactics were those of ambuscade and covert. The Ponkas 
fled before the Pawnee onset. But even as they ran Wa-ba- 
ska-ha heard the cry": " Nu-da-nax-a is killed ! " 

The bond of kinship was stronger than the fear of capture. 
He halted and turned toward the enemy. " Ho ! I will stop 
running," he said. He dashed headlong into the very thick of 
the foe and, across the dead body of his friend and kinsman, 
Wa-ba-ska-ha fell fighting. His vengeance was completed. 



24 AN OVERTURE OF STRIFE. 

But one such brave turn as his stayed the tide of retreat. 
The Pawnees fled at his approach and the Ponkas, following 
after, scattered or captured their routed foemen. 

The death of the two friends ended the conflict. The 
Omahas, to which race the Ponkas belonged, never continued 
a fight after a chief had been killed. Gathering up their spoil 
and their captives the Ponka warriors turned homeward and 
the foray was over. Within the shadow of their own lodges 
the victory was celebrated with song and dance, the rewards 
for bravery were distributed among the warriors who had most 
highly distinguished themselves and the deeds and deaths of 
Nu-da-nax-a and Wa-ba-ska-ha were loudly sung. They had 
gone in glory to the rewards of Wa-kan-da. 

Such heroic deaths as were those of these two friends were 
not uncommon among the barbaric warriors of the American 
forests. The story of Damon and Pythias could find frequent 
parallels in Indian tradition. The " companion warriors " of 
the prairie tribes, the " fellowhood " of the Wyandots, the 
curious rites of the Zuni " Priesthood of the Bow " — these and 
similar phases of Indian military life, of which the study 
lof American ethnology affords us frequent glimpses, are proof 
of a methodical system of war training and a standard of martial 
heroism among the naked warriors of the Western world that 
not even the days of Roman prowess or the later era of a brutal 
knight-errantry could surpass. The cultured Natchez of the 
Mississippi Delta had regularly established schools for the 
military training of their youth ; Toltec and Aztec, alike, laid 
especial stress upon the w^ar-training of their boys ; and in the 
farther north Omaha and Iroquois, bravest of the forest races, 
gave the military education of their youth into the charge of 
eflicient and established teachers. 



ajv overture of strife. 25 

Schooled thus to war and warhke ways the American Indian 

was a born soldier. A barbarian rather than a savao-e there 

was a method in his every move on war-path and in ambuscade 

and battle. And this was based on a peculiar school of tactics 

that was by no means the brutal hack and hew of the savage 

fighter. His art of war was built upon cunning and hedged 

about with strategy. It called for a course of fast and vigil that 

suggests the preliminaries of battle undertaken by the barbarian 

fighters of the so-called days of chivalry. The " knight of 

Arthur's court " and the brave of the Mohawk Valley differed 

but little in their ways of war. True, the Indian warrior did 

not ride out to the slaughter of undefended inferiors sheathed 

in steel and guarded at every point by the ingenuity of the 

blacksmith and the work of the ironmonger. His was the 

more heroic equality of man to man, unhelmeted, naked and 

free. His regimentals were his hideous daubs of mud or clay, 

his weapons the stone hatchet, the knotty war-club and the 

sharpened arrow, his oriflamme the heron's crest or the eagle's 

feather, his torture-chamber the forest clearino- and the sacrifi- 

cial fire. 

At once the exigencies and the rivalries of his life made 
war an ever-present necessity ; but it was also an ever-pres- 
ent opportunity. His heroism was lofty, but it implied craft 
and cunnino-. The warrior who could circumvent was a greater 
brave than he who simplv shot to kill. Glooskap the Algon- 
quin divinity was at once fighter and conjurer. Atotarho the 
Iroquois war-god was wizard and warrior as well ; while even 
the mythical Hiawatha was quite as much the wonderful 
magician as he was champit)n and diplomat. 

Centuries ago there lived on the rocky shores of Lake 
Superior a numerous and warlike people known as the Mun- 



26 ^iV OVERTURE OF STRIFE. 

dua. Presumably of Dakota stock this Indian tribe was fierce 
and cunning, relentless and strong. Into their homeland, 
forced westward by the all-conquering Iroquois, came the 
Ojibways, a people of Algonquin blood. For years the new- 
comers lived in continual terror of their ferocious neighbors. 
To hunt in the shadows of the' Northern forests, to fish on the 
waters of the Great Fresh Sea meant for the Ojibways constant 
anxiety, and the risk of capture and the stake. 

To a people who had faced the Iroquois in fight such a state 
of vassalage was not to be endured. In union there is strength, 
reasoned the badgered Ojibways. Other tribes, their neighbors 
as well, lived like them in terror of the Mun-dua. To these 
the Ojibways suggested a confederacy of annihilation. The 
chiefs in council pledged their warriors to the attempt, and the 
wampum and the war-club were sent in summons among the 
lodees of the confederated tribes. 

Volunteers responded from every village. The preliminary 
rites of fast and vigil, of mystic medicine and sacred dance 
were all performed, and on the appointed day there streamed 
from out the rendezvous the long and wavering line of a great 
war-party. Preceded by their watchful scouts and led on by their 
tribal chiefs, the confederated warriors stealthily threaded the 
narrow trails of the mighty forest, drawing nearer and yet 
nearer to the town of their common enemy, determined, so the 
record tells us, " to put out their fire forever.'' 

The " great town " of the Mun-dua, protected by palisades, 
topped a sightly hill that overlooked the mighty lake. From 
their outlooks the Mun-dua spied out the advance of the 
besiegers ; but confident of their own prowess they laughed 
the laugh of scorn and made no movement to check their 
rebellious vassals. 



AN OVERTURE OF STRIFE. 



27 



The encircling forest poured out its host of besiegers. On 
every side of the Mun-dua town, save vvliere the waters of the 
Great Fresh Sea broke on the rocky beach, the Ojibways and 
their allies swarmed before tlic palisades. With every mark and 
gesture of Indian de- 
fiance thev shouted 
their challenge to 
the foe. They 
danced and sang, 
they raised the scalp- 
halloo and shot their 
flights of arrows at 
the unyielding wall. 
And yet the Mun- 
dua gave no reply ; 
thev sent out no 
force of warriors to 
answer the defiance 
of their vassals. 

At last, after the 
first fury of the be- 
siegers had expended 
itself in war-whoop 
and harmless arrow- 
flight, the gates of 
the village opened 
and forth came, to 
scatter the presump- 
tuous rebels, not the warriors of the tribe, but the boys 
of the Mun-dua. The Indian contempt for an inferior foeman 
could no farther go. But the indignant allies, turning their 




'DEADl T<i IHK MUN-DUA.'" 



28 AA^ OVERTURE OF STRIFE. 

bows into rods, beat back the boys of the Miin-dua into the 
lodges of their mothers. 

" So ; these slaves need harsher chastisement," said the chief- 
tains of the Mun-dua. "They shall have it!" And on the 
next day they set out against their besiegers the young men of 
the tribe, warriors in training only, and bade them prove their 
fitness for the war-path on the bodies of these audacious rebels. 
But they knew not the valor of the Ojibways. Stung to a 
might}' rage by the insolence of their would-be masters these 
old Iro(|Uois fighters rushed against the youngsters sent upon 
them and driving them back through the open gates pursued 
them to the very lintels of their lodges. Thus, forcing the 
palisades, they held in conquest half the invaded town. 

Then, at last, the chiefs of the Mun-dua awoke to their 
daneer. These were not cowards and cravens that had dared 
to rise against their power, but men ; and like men they must 
be met. The warriors sprang to arms ; scarred veterans of the 
war-path, valorous braves of the foray, stalwart chieftains of 
the war parties and the council-fires — they rallied now to 
repel an invader they could no longer affect to despise. They 
smeared themselves with the war-paint, they sang the inspirit- 
ing scalp-song, they anxiously consulted the sacred medicine- 
bags, and, strong of purpose, they flung themselves upon 
their foe. 

That day the fight was to the death. All the deepest 
passions, all the dearest hopes of man — be he civilized or 
savage — were met in deadliest strife. To the Ojibways and 
their allies the struggle was for release from servitude, for 
vengeance and for glory ; to the Mun-dua, brought at last to 
bay, it was for mastery, for home, even for life itself. 

All the desperate arts, all the daring risks, all the deadliest 



AN OVERTURE OE STRIEE. 29 

devices of Indian warfare met or were attempted upon the 
slopes of that blood-stained hill above the inland sea. The 
fight was hand to hand ; and the traditions say that never in 
all the story of Indian warfare was ever fight that exceeded 
the fierceness of that battle by the Great Fresh Sea. 

But victory rested with the Ojibways. Step by step they 
drove the warlike Mun-dua back — back from the palisades, 
back over the hill-top, back to the very edge of the bluff on 
which the village stood. The women and children, dreadino- 
capture, threw themselves into the lake, the ground was strewn 
with the bodies of the bravest chiefs and warriors of the 
Mun-dua ; of all that powerful tribe scarcely a handful was left. 
Silently and sadly, but swiftly as their desperate circumstances 
demanded, the defeated remnant, under cover of a dense lake 
fog that arose as if to shield them, turned and fled from their 
relentless enemies and their field of defeat. 

But the fog was even more treacherous than their human 
foe. For when, after a day and night of weary flight, the foo" 
at last left them, behold ! there they stood on the very hill- 
slope that had held their conquered town and within full view 
of their now jubilant foemen. " It is the will of the Great 
Spirit that we should perish," said the aged chief who alone of 
all their valiant men of war, remained to lead them ; "let us die 
like men." Once more they turned at bay. But thev were 
spent and worn while their enemies were refreshed and strono-. 
Resistance was useless. Chief and warrior fell side by side, and 
when the dispirited remnant turned once more to flight they 
were surrounded and captured. Incorporated, as was the 
Indian custom, within the victorious tribe the captives became 
Ojibways and the name of the Mun-dua disappeared forever 
from the page of Indian story. 



30 AiV OVERTURE OF STRIFE. 

The legends and traditions of those barbaric confederacies 
that but sparsely dotted the vast North American continent 
four centuries ago are marked throughout by just such para- 
graphs as this. Brutal and relentless, shrewd and crafty, actu- 
ated by all the selfishness and by all the cunning that domi- 
nates the barbaric mind, the American Indian, judged from 
his own standards, was still a trained, a valiant and a veteran 
soldier. Had but the records of his years of supremacy in this 
old New World remained to us, as have the records of Goth 
and Vandal, Hun and Celt, we might be able to place in the 
galleries of heroism the portraits of American warriors as bold 
as Alaric, as relentless as Attila, as manly as Vercingetorix, 
as liberty-loving as Civilis, as stubborn in fight as those noble 
old Britons Cassivelaunus and Boadicea and Hereward the 
Wake. 

Their weapons of warfare were as crude as were their mili- 
tary tactics. But both served the purpose of their time and 
gave victory to the bravest until matched against the more 
intelligent methods of the unconquerable white man. To 
as intelligent a use of these latter, the red warrior proved him- 
self unequal. Schooled for centuries on a lower plane of 
effort and action the American Indian was entirely unable to 
assimilate the ways and the weapons of the mailed warriors from 
across the western sea. The military empire of Montezuma in 
the South, the forest despotism of the Iroquois in the North 
went down in defeat before the unattainable precision of Span- 
ish arquebuse and English musket. So fell the Natchez, so 
fell Creek and Algonquin, Illinois and Ojibway. Conquered in 
war as in other matters by the intelligence that was already 
regenerating Europe the free warriors of the American forests 
yielded to the inevitable. The barbaric nobility of pre-Colum- 



AA^ OVERTURE OF STRIFE. 31 

biaii days, unable to cope with the refined cruelties of the 
more powerful white man, speedily degenerated. Daring 
became brutality, and valor lapsed into mere ferocity ; harassed 
and hunted, their cunning turned to treachery, their skill gave 
place to vindictiveness. Forced from lords of the land to 
vassals, serfs and hunted fugitives their war-record became now 
only a series of losing struggles against manifest destiny. 
The history of Indian warfare after the coming of the white 
man is but a sickening record of Christian duplicity and Indian 
atrocity. 

Thus the old day of the earliest American soldier ends. 
The overture of strife that sounded through centuries of blood 
closes in the war-sono; of defeat. A new race of fisfhters from 
over the sea, mailed and oauntleted in shining steel now comes 
to take up the stor\' of war, of conquest and of blood. The 
naked fighter of forest, plain and water-side gives place to the 
bearers of the crossletted banner and the next chapter in the 
story of the American soldier must be that of the cruel but 
valorous Conquistador. 



CHAPTER II. 




THE CONQUISTADORES. 

HE foundations upon which 
A m e r i c a n sovereignty was 
reared were laid in conflict 
and cemented with blood. 
In no other newly-discovered 
continent was the work of 
conquest so thorough, so com- 
prehensive and so complete. 
Asia, though echoing for cen- 
turies to the tramp of con- 
quc-rino- armies, is vet onlv frinoed with the marks of Christian 
occupation. Africa, the seat of the earliest civilizations, has 
been for ages the " Dark Continent," the mystery of which 
Christian science and Christian conquest have hardly yet 
unlocked. 

In America how different is the record. At once the 
genius, the cupidity and the daring of the brightest and bravest 
of Europe's adventurers saw in the new world unlimited fortunes 
to be won, deathless glory to be achieved and an unbounded 
empire to be had only for the taking. 

And they came prepared to take. In every vessel, large or 
small, that followed the track marked out by Columbus and the 



THE CONQUrSTADORES. y^ 

Cabots across the stormy western ocean came Spanish hidalgo, 
French chevaHer and English noble armed for battle and for 
conquest. 

It is true that the first of the white strangers who won 
renown on American shores were sailors rather than soldiers ; 
navigators rather than conquerors. The sons of Eric the 
Northman and " their iron-armed and stalwart crew " were 
fighters, no doubt ; Whitter says of them : 

" I see the gleam of axe and spear ; 
The sound of smitten shields I hear, 
Keeping a harsh and litting time 
To saga's chant and runic rhyme." 

But they came to Markland and to Vinland more for dis- 
covery than for conquest ; their brief and half-mythical occu- 
pation was one of peace and of uncertainty rather than of 
determination. Thorvald the Viking died under an Indian 
arrow near the present site of Boston. Karlsefne's fight with 
the " skraelin^s." as the Indians of Vinland were termed, was 
but a doubtful conflict. The historic valor of the vikings of 
saga and rune seems to have found no place in the legends 
of Vinland. The dragon-ships headed homeward and the 
Norse occupation of America was over almost before it had 
begun. 

But in cabin and in forecastle on the fleets that followed 
the caravels of Columbus the admiral came men who were 
more soldier than sailor and more adventurer than either. The 
great admiral, himself, believed that he had discovered the 
gateway of the earthly paradise. His companions, contem- 
poraries and successors — loyal sons of the Church and devout 
soldiers of the Cross — were confident that they had only to 



34 



THE CONQ UIS TAD ORES. 



enter in to conquer and enjoy all the delights and all the bound- 
less riches of the toil-free garden of Eden. 

So over the sea they came. Castilian nobles brave in 
slashed silks and all the display of a powerful and punctilious 
court, grim old infidel-fighters in war-scarred coats of mail, gay 
young dons with the fluttering love-tokens of dark-eyed senoritas 
tucked jauntily into doublet or cap, impecunious hidalgos, 
down on their luck but confident of winning abundant fortune 
among the pagans whom the Lord had evidently created only 

to be the slaves and serfs of these high- 
toned gentlemen of Spain ! 

Amid the blare of trumpets and the 
roar of cannon they sailed away into 
the unknown. Confident, boastful and 
valorous their dreams were all of con- 
quest ; the possibility of defeat never 
entered into their calculations. So sailed 
the second expedition of Columbus, his 
seventeen vessels thronged wdth a bril- 
hidalo'os of his^h rank, officers of the 
royal household and Andalusian cavaliers," schooled in arms 
and inspired with a passion for hardy achievements by the 
romantic wars of Granada ; so sailed the armament of the valor- 
ous Ojeda, in ten ships fitted out by the purses of the con- 
federated adventurers, bound for fame and fortune ; so too 
in quest of empire went Pedro de Avila, called by men " the 
Fury of the Lord," and Diego de Nicuesa, the rival of the fiery 
Ojeda, who, " in gay and vaunting style,"' set out for the Golden 
Land whereon he needed only to set foot to win. So too sailed 
Ponce de Leon, " lord of Bimini and Adelantado of Florida," 
and Cortez, alcalde of Santiago, on the mission that was to 




liant followins: 



THE CONQUISTADORES. 35 

make liim famous ; and last, but by no means the least, so sailed 
Hernando de Soto prepared for conquest and colonization. 

How speedily all these gallant gentlemen and valorous 
hidalgos of Spain came to grief history only too graphically 
records. High hopes went down in wreck ; fortune and empire 
proved but will-of-the-wisps ; and only a fame strangely com- 
pounded of mighty valor and the most relentless brutality 
remains as their heritage. The world-seeking companions of 
Columbus one and all died the deaths of homeless wanderers ; 
the gallant but reckless Ojeda, aspiring to an empire that should 
rival that of Alexander — than whom, says Charlevoix, " none 
had a heart more lofty, nor ambition more aspiring " — turned 
monk and died so poor that he had not even the small pittance 
needful to pay for his burial. Avila, cruel-minded to the .last, 
rose to power in the New World but, deprived of his offices, lin- 
gered on, disgraced and forgotten, to the great age of ninety years. 
Nicuesa, after a career of romance and disaster almost unpar- 
alleled, wa's expelled from his governorship and seeking flight in 
a crazy brigantine was never heard of more. Ponce de Leon, 
soldier-like to the end, risked an empire that he was never to 
obtain and died from the avenging arrow of the warriors of 
that fair Land of Flowers he had hoped to enslave. Upon 
the tomb of this stout old cavalier stands the only record of 
one whom fate delighted to baffle: " Within this sepulcher rest 
the bones of a man who was a lion by name and still more 
by nature." 

De Soto, bravest and most brutal of all, born for valor and 
swayed by greed, saw his gorgeous and gallant following die 
man by man beneath the arrows of an outraged people and 
the sharper wounds of hardship and disease. Wealth and 
fame, power and prestige alike deserted him and at last he 



36 THE CONQUISTADORES. 

died — a wandering outcast in the very wilderness that he had 
boasted would yield him the revenues of a richer Mexico and a 
more marvelous Peru. 

The story of these gallant captains is but that of their 
comrades and successors. Hundreds and thousands, drawn 
from the very flower of Spanish chivalry, risked their all in a 
crusade that was to be, so they fondly imagined, more crowded 
with heroism and more gloriously golden in results than was 
that against the turbaned infidels of the Holy Land or the 
picturesque conflicts beneath the walls of Granada, 

" The youth of the nation," says Mr, Irving, " bred up to 
daring adventure and heroic achievement, could not brook the 
tranquil and regular pursuits of common life, but panted for 

some new field of romantic enterprise The 

Spanish cavalier embarked in the caravel of the discoverer. 
He carried among the trackless wildernesses of the New World 
the same contempt of danger and fortitude and suffering; the 
same restless, roaming spirit ; the same passion for inroad and 
ravage, and vainglorious exploit ; and the same fervent, and 
often bigoted zeal for the propagation of his faith, that had 
distinouished him durino- his warfare with the Moors. Instances 
in point will be found in the extravagant career of the daring 
Ojeda, particularly in his adventures along the coast of Terra 
Firma, and the wild shores of Cuba ; in the sad story of the 
unfortunate Nicuesa, graced as it is with occasional touches of 
high-bred courtesy ; in the singular cruise of that brave but 
credulous old cavalier, Juan Ponce de Leon, who fell upon the 
flowery coast of Florida in search after an imaginary fountain 
of youth ; and above all, in the checkered fortunes of Vasco 
Nunez de Balboa, whose discovery of the Pacific Ocean forms 
one of the most beautiful and striking incidents in the history 






^pr^^'^^ 







FOR SANTIAGO AND SPAIN! 



THE CONQCISTADORES. 39 

of the New World, and whose fate might furnish a theme 
of wonderful interest for a poem or a drama." 

And what fiohters thev were. Not all their orreed for ijold, 
nor all their brutal wa3's, not all their vainglorious boastings, 
nor all the bigotry of their religious faith can force into the 
background their indomitable pluck, their valor or their fury 
in war. The golden banner of Spain may have flaunted in 
American breezes above superstition, fanaticism, avarice and 
cruelty, but beneath its folds fought also as valiant warriors, as 
courao^eous cavaliers, and as oallant o^entlemen as ever drew 
sword for king, for glory and for renown. 

As types of those commingled qualities that made up the 
picturesque coiiqiiistadGv of the sixteenth century three names 
stand clearly out from the dramatic story of those days of con- 
flict and of blood • Alonso de Ojeda, the companion of 
Columbus, Pedro de Alvarado, the lieutenant of Cortez and 
Francisco Vasquez de Coronado the conqueror of New Mexico. 

Ambitious, adventurous, daring, reckless and always over- 
sanguine, Alonso de Ojeda was a born fighter. He early 
essayed the life of a soldier. Schooled to examples of valor as 
a page of the fiery duke of Medina Celi in the Moorish wars he 
was scarce more than a boy when he joined the second expe- 
dition of Columbus as gentleman-adventurer. From the first 
sight we have of him heading a band of ambitious young 
cavaliers across the mountains of San Domingo on a search for 
the warlike and powerful cacique whom men called " the Lord 
of the Golden House," to the very last glimpse that comes to 
us when, brought to bay in the streets of San Domingo, he 
fought single-handed the whole band of his would-be assassins, 
his story is one of continuous adventure and daring deeds. A 
l^erfect horseman and as gallant a cavalier as ever struck home 



40 THE CONQUISTADORES. 

for " Santiago and Spain ! " he was as magnanimous as he was 
reckless ; as open-handed in peace as he was irresistible in war. 

His capture of Caonabo was a sample of his courage and 
recklessness. At the head of ten mailed and mounted followers 
he boldly dashed across the mountains and into the very 
presence of this fiery Carib chieftain — " the Lord of the Golden 
House." Though surrounded by dangers that suggested death 
at every turn, Ojeda prevailed upon Caonabo reluctantly to 
visit Columbus. Separating him from his extensive escort the 
Spaniard shrewdly induced the cacique to wear as bracelets a 
pair of glittering steel handcuffs. Binding his then unresisting 
prisoner upon the fleet horse he had been induced to mount, 
Ojeda and his followers galloped away from the swarm of 
astounded Caribs and bore the illustrious captive into the very 
camp of Columbus. 

But recklessness is not leadership and the successful fighter 
•can rarely prove a match for the scheming politician. Soldierly 
in bearinq-, dashino; in devices, terrible in war. restless if not 
•engaged in some daring and adventurous exploit, Ojeda was 
yet perpetually the dupe of some wily gold-getter, and was 
always as poor in purse as he was proud in spirit. Success 
never attended his endeavors by lining his pockets with the 
Carib gold that every Spaniard coveted. Wealth continually 
evaded him. 

His indomitable spirit, his tireless vigor, his good comradeship, 
his ability as a captain, his great personal prowess and his un- 
flaQ-o-infir strivins^ for success were more than counterbalanced by 
his utter incompetency to rule where he had conquered, his 
bigotry, his useless hardihood, his scorn of caution, his waste- 
fulness and his impatience of control. These latter all led to 
his downfall. " Good management and good fortune," says 



THE CONQi'ISTADORES. 41 

Charlevoix, " forever failed him," and the very qualities that 
made Alonzo de Ojeda " one of the most fearless and aspiring 
of the band of Ocean chivalry that followed the footsteps of 
Columbus " combined, also, to make his life a failure and his 
career a tragedy. 

Of a similar heroic strain but more wisely balanced was the 
famous Pedro de Alvarado. Stripped of all the bombastic 
romancing of the Spanish chroniclers, to whom this fiery 
young captain was almost a demi-god, Pedro de Alvarado still 
stands forth the very synonym of all that is most fascinating in 
the old-time fighter. As chivalrous as fearless, and as resistless 
as bold this friend and favorite lieutenant of Cortez added to a 
fiery nature a face and form that won for him admirers 
amono- both friends and foes. To the simple and superstitious 
Indians of Mexico this dashing cavalier, cased in armor and 
deftly guiding his galloping steed, seemed almost divine. To 
them he was To-na-ti-uh — the Child of the Sun — and in 
makino- him the hero of a most entertaining romance of the 
Conquest * General Wallace has but embodied in story many 
of the attributes that the conquered Aztecs ascribed to this 
paladin of the Mexican causeway, the brightest figure in the 
awful " night of sorrow." 

Embarkino- as an adventurer almost before he had become 
a man this young soldier of fortune sailed over-sea from his 
home in Badajoz to the alluring Land of Promise. Speedily 
finding opportunity he was the first to bring to Cuba tidings of 
the wealth and power of the Mexico that was to make him 
famous. Following the banner of Cortez to the conquest of 
that half-mythical tropic empire Alvarado became, next to his 

- " The Fair God ; or the Last of f.e 'Tzins," by Ll-w Wallace. A charming ami altogether delightful story of the 
romantic conquest of Mexico. 



42 THE CONQUISTADORES. 

general, the central figure of that historic conquest. A born 
leader of men he speedily rose to command and wherever 
opportunity for fighting occurred or hope of booty beckoned he 
was first on the field and established a reputation for daring 
and for valor wherever danger threatened or death appeared 
most imminent. His personal bravery and personal prowess, 
(displayed in such achievements as that famous leap across the 
bloody causeway that has now become historic) dwell longest 
with the lover of gallant deeds who reads his story and yields to 
the fascinations of his warlike feats, but the student of history 
sees beneath the knightly bearing the less attractive traits that 
were so often discoverable in the make-up of the conquistador. 

For this brilliant fighter was far from god-like. He was 
greedy for gold, treacherous toward a trusting foeman, over- 
bearing, arrogant and full of craft. " He had,'' says Prescott, 
who recounts with fervor all his great exploits, " a heart rash, 
rapacious and cruel." And when the Aztec nation fell and the 
Conquest was accomplished few contributed more toward 
making both fall and conquest bitter and unchristian than did 
this typical conquistador, this valiant " Child of the Sun," Pedro 
de Alvarado. It seems but a fitting retribution that his death 
in after years should have come in the hour of his defeat by 
these very Mexican Indians whom he had conquered and by an 
unsoldierly fall from his horse — one of those same strange 
and mysterious beasts upon whose back in earlier days this 
redoubtable To-na-ti-uh had been so irresistible. 

Of a very different type and yet quite as distinctively a 
Spaniard was Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, the "conqueror" 
of New Mexico. No longer a young man this honest cavalier 
of Salamanca was of grave deportment, affable manners and of 
fair executive ability. Long residence in Mexico, where he was 



L 




THE CONQUISTADORES. 45 

established in 1540 as governor of one of the western provinces, 
had given him acquaintance with the manners and disposition 
of the natives of that conquered land. The impetuosity of 
youth had given place to the caution and sedateness of middle 
age. A valiant and courageous gentleman, slow to decide and 
not always quick to act, he was watchful to prevent disaster, 
and while never courting danger, he was cool and brave in 
action when danger really came. 

Such a leader was certain to command the respect of his 
followers, and Coronado seems to have had tliis and to have in- 
spired also both the love and the confidence of his soldiers. 
Says one of them, Pedro de Casteneda the chronicler of his 
captain's wanderings : " Never was Spanish general in the 
Indies more belov^ed or better obeyed than he." 

But grave, circumspect and valiant though he was Coronado 
seems to have been compounded of those strangely clashing 
elements that united in the Spanish fighter of those olden 
times. An unforgiving foeman, terrible in his revenges and 
contemptuous of the poor natives over whom he was either 
ruler or conqueror, Coronado was, above all, avaricious, super- 
stitious and credulous to a degree, with an ever-ready ear for the 
big stories of those whom policy, timidity or cunning made 
" the brethren of the long bow." Authorized by the viceroy 
Mendoza to inquire into certain reports as to an alleged native 
empire to the northward Coronado swallowed with true Span- 
ish gusto all the wonderful stories of the " Seven Cities of 
Cibola " that came to him. Here was a new Mexico to be con- 
quered ; here were wealth and empire to be had for the taking; 
he was to be a more successful Cortez, a richer Pizarro ! He 
evidently essayed to investigate the reports with caution but he 
as evidently accepted as gospel all the crazy fictions of the 



46 THE CONQUISTADORES. 

crafty Indian, Tejos, all the pleasant fables of his own prede- 
cessor, Nuno de Guzman, all the incredible stories of that pict- 
uresque tramp Cabeza de Vaca, and all the barefaced falsehoods 
told by the monk Marcos, by the Munchasen-like negro 
Stephen and by that particularly mendacious native whom the 
"Conquerors" called "the Turk." 

So, setting out from Compostella, the capital of his province, 
in the month of February, 1540, Coronado led into the north- 
ern wilderness a gallant array of gentlemen adventurers, sturdy 
fighters, and Indian allies. 

Never were expectations more utterly blasted; never did 
high hopes go down in greater wreck. The expedition faced 
toward the north with the most glowing prospects of easy con- 
quest and enormous booty. Across the desert the prize 
awaited them : " Seven oreat cities, the houses whereof were 
built of lime and stone, two, three, sometimes five stories in 
height, ascended on the outside by ladders; whose inhabitants 
clothed themselves in gowns of cotton, in woolen cloth, and in 
garments of leather, wearing girdles of turquoises around their 
waists, emeralds in their ears and noses ; whose common house- 
hold vessels were of gold and silver, and where gold was more 
abundant than in Peru, the walls of the temples being covered 
with plates of that precious metal." 

Disappointment met them almost at the outset. But still 
they pressed on, lured by the promise that " just beyond " were 
the coveted treasures. " The seven cities of Cibola," says Mr. 
Skinner, " that reared themselves on the marge of Coronado's 
imagination as proudly as would Palmyra and old Tyre dwin- 
dled on his approach to ruined villages ; nor could their 
occupants guide him to those veins and beds where precious 
stones and metals glistened and where they are to-day yielding 



THE CONQUISTADORES. 47 

up to our nation the wealth of an empire." The gold-seeking 
soldiers of Coronado daily spurned untold treasure beneath 
their feet and yet they knew it not. 

Still on and on they pressed. Across the hills and valleys, 
the deserts, plains and water-courses of Arizona and New 
Mexico, penetrating, so it is claimed, even into the present con- 
fines of Colorado, of Kansas and Nebraska. Then they gave 
it up, and turning back retraced their homeward way a disap- 
pointed, dispirited and decimated band. Two 3'ears of wander- 
ing had yielded thetn neither empire, gold nor booty. Of all 
that gallant "army of conquest" only about an hundred tat- 
terdemalions dragged themselves back to Mexico and all the 
brilliant visions of Coronado ended for him in defeat and dis- 
grace. The viceroy Mendoza expended his wrath upon the 
unhappy leader, his governorship was taken from him and he 
himself died poor, forgotten, and half-crazed, the victim of a 
baseless dream of glory. 

And yet Coronado deserved a better fate. He had but 
obeyed orders as a soldier should. He had found for civiliza- 
tion a land that was to be in time the treasure-house of the 
world ; he had with admirable skill, as General Simpson now 
declares, led out an expedition that " for extent in distance trav- 
eled, duration in time and the multiplicity of its co-operating 
expeditions equalled, if it did not exceed, any land expedition 
that has been undertaken in modern times." 

In how many instances the story of the conquistador was 
but a repetition of that of Coronado the musty pages of the old 
chroniclers, couched in crabbed Spanish or still more crabbed 
Latin, only too faithfully bear record. It was a time of rash 
endeavor, misty promise, and high expectation. Men risked 
their all for glory, for booty and for gold. Rumors were tor- 



48 THE CONQriSTADORES. 

tured into facts as across the broad Atlantic marvelous tales of 
still more marvelous regions reached the ears of European 
nations, already tingling, as Mr. Thompson says, " with the fas- 
cinatine stories of Columbus and his followers. Mexico," he 
adds, " had fallen before Cortez ; Peru had poured her spoils 
into the bloody hands of Pizarro. Ships were slipping away 
from the ports of Spain with their prows to the southwest. 
The wind in their sails was the breath of fortune. When the 
ships returned they came loaded down with gold and bearing 
the heroes of wild battles, the doers of strange deeds." What 
wonder that spendthrift hidalgoes wath more pluck than pos- 
sessions and avaricious dons, greedy for gold, should take a bond 
of fate in lands where glory and booty alike were to be won ! 

Such an one was the bankrupt farmer, Vasco Nunez called 
Balboa, who with an assurance that was almost monumental 
turned the contempt of his associates into confidence and forced 
their very waywardness to serve his private ends. Achieving 
advancement by energy he became successful both as conqueror 
and governor, coined the wealth of provinces into castellanos 
with which to line his own capacious pockets and became for- 
ever immortal as the discoverer of the vast Pacific. 

Such, too, was Balboa's most relentless rival, Pedro Arias 
de Avila, known as Pedrarias, a sturdy fighter in the Moorish 
wars, but a man thoroughly wily, unscrupulous, politic, revenge- 
ful and vindictive. With him from San Lucar a gallant array 
of two thousand Spanish knights and gentlemen-adventurers 
w^ent westward to the fairy-land of the Golden Castile where 
gems were as plentiful as Biscay herrings and gold was to be 
gathered from the o-round in handfuls. It was a fatal harvest. 
Within one month after the landing at Darien seven hundred 
of that gallant following perished in the clutch of enemies 



THE CONQUTSTADORES. 49 

more terrible than the infidel Moor — famine and disease. Dis- 
appointed, suspicious, passionate and envious Pedrarias vented 
his spleen upon his rival Balboa. He dispatched him on im- 
possible missions, placed him in compromising situations and 
fairly forcing him into alleged treachery, brutally persecuted 
and finally killed the only man who could have helped him to 
the gold, and the possessions he so greedily coveted. 

Another such, swayed by the hope of gain, was the " Bache- 
lor " Martin Fernandez de Enciso. Coming into the American 
provinces a speculative lawyer he turned the quarrels of men 
to his personal profit and accumulated by his successful law 
business a fortune of two thousand castellanos (about $11,000). 
Dazzled by the promise of the chief-justiceship of a conquered 
province he was tempted into investing his savings in a roman- 
tic venture and with strangely varying fortunes became in turn 
adventurer, soldier, conqueror, governor, rival, bankrupt, culprit 
and prisoner, as feud and faction tore asunder that struggling 
colony on the narrow Isthmus. 

Such, too, were scores and hundreds of others — the dupes 
of false rumors, the sport of baseless promises. Led out by the 
hope of treasure and the possibility of rebuilding ruined fortunes 
they braved every danger and essayed the most reckless endeav- 
ors. The old records teem with their stories, compounded of 
mingled valor and rapacity, greed and bravery. Morales and 
the spoil of the Pearl Islands, Badajos and the gold of Parita, 
Gil Gonzales and the treasures of Nicaragua, Grijalva and the 
tribute of Vera Cruz, Guzman and the torture-wrung " presents " 
of New Galicia — the list could be extended for pages, fascinat- 
ing as a romance of the paladins, repulsive in the realism of 
brutality, replete with heroism and suffering, treachery and 
cruelty, valor and strategy and the dash of daring deeds. 



50 THE CONQUISTADOR ES. 

But always, in all this bravery, endurance and show of cour- 
age the deadly canker was at work — the greed for gold that, 
ever, with the conqziistador went hand in hand with love of 
glory. Once again was the Scripture fulfilled : the love of 
money was, indeed, the root of all the evil that to this day has 
sullied the record of Spanish pluck and Spanish valor in 
America. It made of the cavalier a brute, of the knight a 
vulture, of the hidalgo a worse than murderer. It changed 
trusting natives into implacable foemen, it engendered hateful 
rivalries between leaders and turned the swords of comrades 
against one another's breasts. 

It embittered the life of Columbus, wrecked the fame of 
Cortez and poisoned the glory of Alvarado. It did to death 
Balboa and Pizarro, Olid and Nicuesa, Garay and Ponce de 
Leon, Coronado and De Soto. It has linked with the memories 
of the boldest and bravest the never-dying scorn that a world, 
loving gain and gold, still visits upon the usurer, the extortioner 
and the assassin. It has capped the most marvelous of con- 
quests with the greatest and basest of crimes. 

While rightly the story of the old conquistadores belongs to 
the regions -round about the Indies — to Mexico and the Antil- 
les, to the Isthmus and the western coasts of South America — 
still, across the page of Northern story, falls the shadow of the 
Spanish warrior, defiant alike in exploration, in conquest and 
in defeat. The glitter of Spanish armor and the gleam of Span- 
ish spur make picturesque the earlier annals of North American 
occupation when the golden banner of Spain floated above 
regions claimed for Cross and King beyond the Capes of 
Florida, on the shores of the Chesapeake and by the waters of 
the Hudson and the Mohawk. The iron heel of Spanish con- 
quest left its enduring imprint upon lands that have for genera- 



THE CONQUJSrADORES. 51 

tions acknowledged occupation only by France or England and 
the colonizers of the seventeenth century found in the names 
that they presumed to be strictly Indian the traces of Spanish 
occupation and conquest of a far earlier day. But no one of 
these misty exploits rose to the importance or achieved the 
reputation of that wasteful, cruel, heroic and historic march 
made in the mid-years of the sixteenth century by De Soto and 
his men. 

It is a stirring story and one that always bears retelling. 
Westward from San Lucar, that port of Seville from which had 
gone across the broad Atlantic so many ambitious cavaliers of 
Spain as full of hope, as certain of success as these, sailed 
Hernando de Soto and six hundred fighting men. Re-embarking 
at Havana, nearly a thousand strong, the expedition steered 
for its promised land and on the thirtieth of May, 1539, landed 
on the Florida coast, just east of the Everglades in that section 
of the State now known as Hillsborough Bay. 

It was the most formidable expedition yet organized in 
America for conquest. Every man was a fighter; there w^ere 
few gray hairs in the whole army, and at its head stood Her- 
nando de Soto, one of the conquerors of Peru, a man amply 
qualified to lead a gallant host to victorious deeds. " In fame,'' 
says Dr. Monette, " he almost equalled the conquerors of Mexico 
and Peru themselves ; in courage and perseverance he was not 
less. He was in the prime of manhood and only waited some 
iit opportunity to signalize himself and hand down his fame to 
posterity equally brilliant with that of Cortez and Pizarro." 

Whatever was needful for an expedition of such magnitude 
was not lacking. There were wood-workers and iron-workers, 
there were chemists and miners, scholars and priests; there 
were tools for the builders, there was apparatus for assaying the 



52 THE CONQUISTADORES. 

" find " in gold and silver they were determined to obtain ; 
there were chains and fetters for the captives, bloodhounds to 
pull them down, cards for the games of chance on which their 
captors might stake and hazard them. Nothing, it is asserted, 
was omitted from the " furniture " of the expedition " which ex- 
perience could suggest or avarice and cruelty could dictate." 
The warm sun of Florida flashed down on the steel armor of 
the cavaliers glittering with gold ; on coats of mail, on helmets, 
on breastplates and on shields; lance and broadsword, spear 
and cimeter gleamed in warlike hands; cross-bow and arquebuse 
rested upon many a stalwart shoulder and •' stimulated by the 
love of fame and still more by the love of gold, this roving band 
of gallant freebooters plunged into the savage wilds " in which 
they expected to find empires more magnificent and treasure 
more abundant than their comrades had wrested from the con- 
quered " emperors " of Mexico and Peru. 

There was little at their landing-place on Hillsborough Bay 
to suggest treasure or empire. And from there even to the end 
the Spaniards were the dupes of the tribes they sought to con- 
quer and did so cruelly maltreat. Grown wary through experi- 
ence of the tortures of earlier white visitors — the credulous 

Ponce de Leon, the brutal Ayllon, the wretched Narvaez the 

Florida Indians sought to rid themselves of these latest comers 
by alluring stories of great cities and vast treasures to the north 
or west — -just beyond!" So, "just beyond," this brilliant 
cavalcade was ever pushing, westward and yet further west- 
ward, growing each day less brilliant, each day more desperate. 
Through morass and swamp and dreary waste of sand, through 
tangled thicket and interminable forest, fordincj rivers, climbino- 
mountains, fighting hostile hosts, always expectant, but with 
never a touch of the coveted gold, with never a sight of the 



THE CONQ UISTAD ORES. 



53 



gorgeous cities, thev struggled on — a l^and of baffled ma- 
rauders, grown more desperate with each day's disappointment, 
more cruel with each savage struggle for supremacy. For three 
weary years the zigzag hunt for fortune went slowly on. Up 
and down the land where perpetual summer reigns, over that 
section of our Southern country now known as the States of 
Florida, Georgia, 
Alabama, Missis- 
sippi, Louisiana 
and Arkansas 
they wandered 
on, a fellowship 
of valorous fight- 
ers vainly seek- 
ing for the im- 
possible. 

At last came 
the tragedy. One 
by one cavalier 
and artisan, 
spearman a n d 
priest dropped by 

the way. The bones of their stern but gallant commander 
were lowered into their last resting-place, beneath the yellow 
waters of the mighty Mississippi ; the wildernesses of the far Red 
River country forever dispelled the promise of gold or empire ; 
and, with desire, effort and endurance alike dead within them, 
tattered, beggared, travel-worn and utterly disheartened, still 
fiQ-htinof their inveterate Indian foemen till the hated land faded 
in the distance, they floated down the great river to the greater 
Gulf and to the ports of friendly Mexico — a miserable remnant 




THE FIRST WHITE MAN 



54 THE CONQUISTADOR ES. 

of the gallant array of glittering cavaliers to whom San Liicar 
and Havana had bidden such hearty godspeed and farewell. 

In all history there is scarcely to be found a sadder example 
of high hopes brought to ruin, of golden expectations unful- 
filled. It is a story bright with heroic exploits, black with per- 
fidious deeds, " The governor," says Orviedo, his chronicler, 
" was very fond of this sport of killing Indians ; " and the 
marks of " the governor's sport " have streaked the winding 
trail of his wanderings with blood and left an irradicable stain 
upon his memory. 

Brighter even than the story of Spanish heroism is the 
record of Indian patriotism. Step by step, through all these 
three years of wandering did the warlike tribes of the South, 
sinking their hereditary feuds, combine to repel the white in- 
vader. Stubbornly, tenaciously, heroically they contested the 
possession of their home-land and the bloody battle of Mauvilla, 
only saved to Spain by the charges of the resistless cavalry, 
proved the mettle, the valor and the self-devotion of the native 
American soldier. 

What De Soto was, what were Ayllon and Guzman, Ojeda 
and Balboa, Ponce de Leon and de Cordova, Narvaez and 
Cabeza de Vaca, that, also, were the hundreds and thousands 
of others — fighting men and adventurers of every rank and of 
every grade in life — who essayed to win fame and fortune in 
the New World and who, because of their valiant and intrepid 
deeds, their heroic achievements and profitless accumulations, 
their high-sounding titles, and never-weakening bombast, their 
marches and their battles, their rivalries and their feuds, have 
ever been remembered under the name they coveted — el 
conqnisiadores, the conquerors. 

With vast opportunities for bloodless and peaceable con- 



THE CONQUISTADORES. 55 

quest, for Christian enlightenment and a gentler civilization 
they wrecked their mighty chances on the fatal reefs of greed. 
Never conquerors over themselves they have gone into history 
as destroyers and braggarts where they should have been up- 
builders and gentlemen. The boast of one of them : " I am 
not merel)^ a De Soto — though that, by St. James, were 
enough for any man. I am a Sotomayor, a Mendoza, a Bova- 
dilla, a Losada, a — sir ! I have blood royal in my veins, and 
you dare to refuse my challenge," was fitly answered by the 
response of a noble Englishman : " Richard Grenville can show 
quarterings, probably, against even Don Guzman Maria Magda- 
lena Sotomayor de Soto, or against the bluest blood of Spain. 
But he can show, moreover, thank God, a reputation which 
raises him as much above the imputation of cowardice, as it 
does above that of discourtesy." 

Still, with all their shortcomings — their vices, their cruel- 
ties, their oreed, their bombast, their biorotries and their credu- 
lity the old Conquistadores were a valiant and picturesque lot. 
If their record is smirched with tyranny and their valor is 
dimmed with blood, their ancestry and environments may be 
proffered as at once the reason and the excuse. They were, at 
least, the first link in the chain of fighting men that joins the 
new America to the old and have therefore due claim to a 
prominent place in our story as typical of that savagely pict- 
uresque life, when as Maurice Thompson tells us " priests were 
pirates and gentlemen were jobbers " — those romantic if 
brutal days when, according to Theodore Irving, " the knight- 
errantry of the Old World was carried into the depths of the 
American wilderness." 



CHAPTER III. 



COLONIAL FIGHTING-MEN. 




HE claim of Spain to the posses- 
sion of the Western world was 
not long to remain undisputed. 
The audacious " Bull " of that 
Pope of Rome, Alexander vi., — 
who, himself a Spaniard and the 
favorer of his native land, sought 
to make all America Iberian — 
was a challenge to all the foes of 
Spain. And of these none were 
hotter, none more fierce than the daring spirits of England and 
of France. 

At once ships and sailors, adventurers and fighters sailed 
over-sea in the very track of Columbus's caravels. Rivalries 
led to entanglements and these to relentless wars ; and while 
those summer seas that men call the Spanish Main grew red 
with blood as Avarice grappled with Greed, and Spanish Blood- 
hounds snarled at English Mastiffs, still further to the north, 
in Canada and Virginia and alon^: the Atlantic sea-board, the 
flags of France and England floated above struggling settle- 
ment and seaward-looking fort. After the first flush of disap- 
pointment at their failure to discover the always-coveted gold 

56 



COLON [AL FIGHTING-MEA^. 57 

had passed the freebooter gave place to the trader; explorers 
became occupiers and adventurers settled down as colonists. 

But, whether as adventurer, trader or colonist, life in the 
New World was ever precarious. To the danger of Indian 
attack and the personal jealousies of the settlers were added 
the race feuds, the religious differences and the international 
hostilities that made the American continent a continual bat- 
tle-ground. For years one could scarcely dare assert what flag 
might on the morrow float above the colony of which he was a 
part. On the pine-fringed northern border Frenchman and 
Englishman struggled for the possession of Canada and with 
defensive fortresses fronted each other on the broken Maine 
coast. The valiant Champlain and the fiery Frontenac made 
for themselves glorious records as loyal captains of France and 
only the unyielding hostility of the warlike Iroquois kept them 
from the conquest of the English border-lands. Farther to the 
south Dutchman and Englishman quarreled as to the right of 
occupancy and colonization in the lands about the Connecticut 
and the Manhattans. Dutchman and Swede grappled over the 
problem as to which was to have and which to hold the banks 
of the Delaware. Rival English factions disputed over their 
rights on the Chesapeake and, to the still further south, first 
Spaniard and Frenchman and then Spaniard and Englishman 
fought for Florida and the Gulf, making the story of Southern 
occupation a fearful tragedy, stained with the blood of the 
victims of such a butcher as Menendez and the reveno^es of 
such an assassin as Gourges. 

These continual disturbances, no less than the ever-present 
horrors of Indian hostilities, made every colonist of necessity a 
fighter. The trusty matchlock was as indispensable a piece of 
church equipment as psalter and prayer-book, and, after the 



58 COLONJAL FIGHTING-MEN. 

stern manner of those days of trial, the stoutest arm and the 
sturdiest frame were the defense and stay of every settlement. 
The block-house and the palisaded fort were near at hand for 
convenient retreat and shelter, while every church that crested 
the hill-top was sanctuary and bristling arsenal as well. 

Such a strong support — stout of arm and sturdy of frame 
— was that doughty Puritan fighter, Miles Standish, the Cap- 
tain of Plymouth. Longfellow's portraiture might apply to 
many another hardy leader of the colonial fighting-men of those 
earlier days : 

" Sliort of stature he was, Ijut strongly huilt and athletic, 
Broad in the shoulders, deep-chested, with muscles and sinews of iron ; 
Brown as a nut was his face, hut his russet beard vvas already 
Flaked with patches of snow, as hedges sometimes in November." 

Many another, too, might be able to make his professional 
boast : 

" Look at these arms," lie said, " the warlike weapons that hang here 
Burnished and bright and clean, as if for parade or inspection ! 
So I take care of my arms as you of your pens and your nikhorn. 
Then, too, there are my soldiers, my great, invincible army. 
Twelve men, all equipped, having each his rest and his matchlock, 
Eighteen shillings a month, together with diet and pillage. 
And, like Cresar, I know the name of each of my soldiers ! 

Look ! you can see from this window my brazen howitzer planted 
High on the roof of the church, a preacher who speaks to the purpose. 
Steady, straightforward, and strong, with irresistible logic, 
Orthodox, flashing conviction right into the hearts of the heathen. 
Let them come, if they like, and the sooner they try it the better, — 
Let them come, if they like, be it sagamore, sachem or pow-wow, 
Aspinet, Samoset, Corbitant, Squanto, or Tokamahamon ! " 

As quick, as choleric and as impetuous, too, was many an- 
other Colonial captain, with just as peculiar and by no means 



COLONIAL FIGHTING-MEN. 59 

kid-gloved methods of dealing with the Indian foeman. The 
stalwart Captain of Plymouth had little sympathy with the 
school of Las Casas and Eliot. Listen, as he sounds his de- 
fiance in the council : 

" What ! do you mean to make war with milk and the water of roses ? 

Is it to shoot red squirrels you have your howitzer planted 

There on the roof of the church, or is it to shoot red devils? 

Truly the only tongue that is understood by a savage 

Must be the tongue of fire that speaks from the mouth of the cannon ! 

Leave this matter to me, for to me by right it pertaineth. 
War is a terrible trade ; but in the cause that is righteous, 
Sweet is the smell of powder ; and thus I answer the challenge ! " 

Then from the rattlesnake's skin, with a sudden, contemptuous gesture, 

Jerking the Indian arrows, he filled it with powder and bullets 

P'ull to the very jaws, and handed it back to the savage. 

Saying, in thundering tones : " Here, take it ! this is your answer ! " 

Such a fighter, though a much greater braggart, was Cap- 
tain John Smith, the " paladin " of Virginia. Such, too, was 
Captain John Mason, of the Connecticut colony, victor in the 
Pequot War ; and such were Captain Benjamin Church, the 
conqueror of " King " Philip, Captain " Nat " Bacon, the bril- 
liant vouno- Viroinia fio^hter and leader in a somewhat remark- 
able rebellion, and Major Thomas Trueman, of Maryland, the 
murderer of the Susquehannoughs. Intrepid, deliberate and 
relentless, hating an Indian even more cordially than a " pa- 
pist," their methods were short, sharp and decisive, and to their 
tactics and their peculiar plans of action is due, very largely, 
the heritaore of the American nation in Indian hatreds and 
Indian wars. 

Of all the fighting governors of colonial times Oglethorpe 
was the most heroic, Stuyvesant the most picturesque, Andros, 
with a full share of the belligerent spirit, was no match for a 



6o 



COL ONIAL FIGHTING-MEN. 



determined people ; Berkeley, a type of the old-time tyrant, could 
have made no head against the patriotism of Bacon, had not 
death stepped in as his ally. Few, if any, of the royal govern- 
ors, with the exception of Oglethorpe and Bienville, could suc- 




THE REVOLT OF THE TRAINBANDS " LEISLER. YOU MUST LEAD US ! " 



cessfully direct the war-spirit that slumbered in the breasts of 
colonial trader and husbandman. It needed the deeper and 
underlying home interests of native or naturalized governors 
to lead their neighbors to action and to victory. It was Leis- 
ler, of New York, the "people's governor," a captain in the 



COLONIAL FIGHTIX G-MEN. 6i 

city train-bands, who awakened in his fellow-countrymen the 
first desires for personal liberty and organized the first really 
offensive measures against the French power in Canada. It 
was Pepperell, the Maine merchant and militiaman, who at 
last brought this struggle for supremacy to a crisis and, con- 
queror of Louisburg, was the earliest of the native generals 
of his King. 

For our present purpose it will be sufficient to give brief 
mention here to tw^o of the colonial leaders — types of the 
foreign and the native stock — who developed the martial spirit 
in the people and made out of colonists and farmers the first 
real American soldiers. These shall be James Edward Ogle- 
thorpe and William Pepperell. 

Born to a lov^e of arms, a daring commander of men and a 
soldier of tried experience in European wars Oglethorpe yet 
came to the government of his Georgia colony desiring only 
peace, substantial growth and the good-will of men. That he 
was forced into prominence as a successful commander was due 
to the aggressions of the power of Spain. 

Alarmed at the growth of English colonization in the South 
the Spanish rulers in Cuba and Florida determined to crush 
out the Saxon. Hostilities were not long in commencing. 
Frederica and Saint Augustine were not far apart and the 
Spanish attacks on the Georgia settlements were speedily fol- 
lowed by the English assault on the Florida fortress. 

Oelethorpe was the soul of this latter movement. The 



o 



friend of the Wesleys and of Whitfield and an ardent desirer 
of peace for his colony he was above all a soldier. If Spain 
determined for war, war she should have. His investment of 
St. Augustine was brilliant and strategic. Had he but been 
properly supported by his associates and subordinates the era 



62 COLONIAL FIGHTING-MEN. 

of Spanish occupation in North America would have come to 
an end long before its lingering death nearly half a century 
later. 

But though St. Augustine did not surrender Oglethorpe's 
eneroetic measures bore instant fruit. Men saw that the aide- 
de-camp of Prince Eugene, the hero of Belgrade, had lost 
nothing of his old-time valor. Spain awoke to the fact that 
she must needs increase her power if she wished to overcome 
this old fighter of the Turks. Forced to the defensive until 
such time as they were able to prepare a strong and formidable 
armament the Spaniards for two years longer kept behind their 
stone walls. At last, in the summer of 1742, they gathered for 
the decisive blow. In that year this new Spanish Armada 
sailed from Havana well equipped for the final and utter ex- 
tinction of the English power in the South. 

But the spirit, of his ancestors lived in the gallant English- 
man. As the Oglethorpes of Surrey " in days of good Queen 
Bess " had rallied to the resistance of the first and greater 
Armada so he, too, determined upon an heroic stand. " If we 
have no succor,'' he wrote, " all we can do is to die bravely in 
•His Majesty's service." 

The Spanish fleet of fifty-one sail, carrying a force of nearly 
five thousand soldiers, bore down upon the Georgia coast. 
Oglethorpe had but six hundred and fifty men and a few small 
vessels. Men looked to see the Georgia colony go down in 
blood before the force of Spain. 

But to a hero nothing is impossible. " With a bravery and 
dash almost beyond comprehension," says Mr. Jones, " by 
strategy most admirable, Oglethorpe by a masterly disposition 
of the troops at command, coupled with the timidity of the 
invaders and the dissensions which arose in their ranks, before 



COLONIAL FLGHTLXG-MEX. 63 

the middle of July put the entire Spanish army and navy to 
flioht." 

His personal daring turned the battle of the Bloody Marsh 
from a rout to a victory ; his inspiring courage beat back the 
Spanish galleys from an attack on Frederica and led the pur- 
suit under the very guns of their war-ships ; his pluck, his shrewd- 
ness and his ability to seize upon opportunities at just the right 
moment dismayed and confounded the Spanish commanders 
and absolutely drove away the invading army at the very 
instant when they might have struck a crippling blow and 
obtained a certain victory. There is much of truth, notwith- 
standing the apparent exaggeration, in Whitfield s enthusiastic 
comment : " The deliverance of Georgia from the Spaniards is 
such as cannot be paralleled but by some instances out of the 
Old Testament." And Mr. Lodge asserts that " Oglethorpe 
saved two provinces to England by as gallant fighting and 
shrewd generalship as the whole history of the American 
colonies can show. A brave soldier, an honest, upright, kind- 
hearted gentleman," so Mr. Lodge declares, "he is a man whom 
anv State miijht resrard with reverence and admiration as its 
founder, first ruler and defender." 

Of a different character but no less the gentleman and the 
soldier was William Pepperell, the merchant of Portsmouth, in 
New Hampshire. A colonial shop-keeper with but little knowl- 
edge of war, honored and respected rather because of his 
thirty years of service as an upright judge and a successful 
political adviser than for his acquaintance wuth military needs 
and tactics Peppefell was placed in command of the land forces 
in New Eni^land's m-eatest crusade against Canada. 

So skillfully did he conduct his part of the operations that 
the strong fortress of Louisburg on Cape Breton — the bul- 



64 COLONIAL FIGHTLNG~MEN. 

walk of Canada — fell after an almost bloodless siege of fifty 
days. " It was a gallant exploit,"' says Mr. Lodge, "almost the 
only glory of an unsuccessful war." The greatest triumph of 
colonial fighting-days was secured by an undisciplined army 
" of New England mechanics and farmers and fishermen " led 
on by a Yankee merchant. 

It was really the first American army. Leisler's force of 
invasion, which a half-century before had failed through colonial 
jealousies and wrecked the mighty purpose of its energetic pro- 
moter, could scarcely assert its claim to be esteemed an American 
army. Pepperell's men were largely native-born. And Wil- 
liam Pepperell, tradesman though he was, may safely be con- 
sidered as the first native military leader produced by the 
colonies. Other commanders of American birth there had 
been but none had as yet been selected for so exalted a position. 
The titled adventurers who were royal governors by favor of 
the king of England were far too anxious themselves to pose as 
leaders and commanders to permit any mere " provincial " 
to usurp their dignities. It is therefore to the credit of Shirley, 
the King's Governor in Massachusetts and himself no mean 
soldier, that in the famous expedition against Louisburg he 
should have selected for chief command so able a native Ameri- 
can as William Pepperell. This Canadian success led to imme- 
diate honors. The victorious commander was created Sir 
William Pepperell. He was acting governor of the colony of 
Massachusetts and in 1757 he was commissioned as lieutenant- 
general and commander of the Massachusetts militia, now 
grown to over seven thousand men. He died on the very eve 
of the victorious campaign that gave Canada to England. 

Oglethorpe and Pepperell, however, were but the accom- 
paniments and the outgrowth of the years that were opening 




rUAXKI.IN AS A i-KlVATK 



COLONIAL FIGHTING-MEN. 67 

the way for the real American soldier. The hardships, the 
struggles, the defeats and the slow successes of colonial life 
brought to the service many leaders skilled in border war and 
toughened the temper of men from whom sturdy fighters came. 
Miles Standish's thirteen men, his " great, invincible army," 
could be duplicated in every one of the struggling settlements 
that looked out to the eastward upon the stormy Atlantic and 
westward into the no less dangerous wilderness. From these 
slender homeguards grew, in time, the provincial militia-men 
who volunteered for the wars against France and Spain and 
prepared the way for the greater revolution. 

But not always in fighting Indians or invading hostile 
lands were the colonial fiohtino-men in arms. Too often were 
these arms turned against one another. In jealousies of office 
and in border disputes, in hair-brained endeavors and in open 
rebellion, time upon time, did brother face brother and neighbor 
neighbor in the hot encounters of those earliest days. 

The very composition of the several colonies fomented dis- 
content. The mixed character of the settlers aggravated 
disorder. From the time of beginnings, when Captain John 
Smith of the Virginia colony — " an adventurer of a high order 
in an aoe of adventurers" — came into direct conflict with 
Governor Wino^field and his other associates, down to that 
later day, when in Boston streets Crispus Attucks and his 
riotous companions faced, and fell before a platoon of British 
soldiers, dissatisfaction, jealousies, desire and unrest stirred up 
continual strife which not unfrequently blazed out into open 
rebellion. Chief among these popular uprisings, according to 
chronological order, were : the Ingle roysterings in Maryland 
in 1645, file Bacon rebellion in Virginia in 1675, the Culpepper 
revolt in North Carolina in 1677, the revolt of the people 



68 COLONIAL FIGHTING-MEN. 

against aristocratic oppression in 1689 — led by Bradstreet in 
Massachusetts and Leisler in New Yorl< ; the race " rebellion " 
of Father Sebastian Rasle in Maine in 1724, the election riots 
in Pennsylvania in 1739, the bloody marcli of the " Paxton 
Boys " on Philadelphia in 1763, and the revolt of the Regula- 
tors in South Carolina in 1764. The fight at Golden Hill, in 
New York City, and the Boston Massacre — both disturbances 
of the year 1770, and both rather vaingloriously claimed 
as " the first blood of the Revolution'' — fitly closed an hun- 
dred and fifty years of struggle, sedition and dispute. 

But, through all these (by means, even, of some of them) 
was the mixed condition of colonial society merging into some- 
thing definite, into something American. As it took an hun- 
dred years and more to make of the caste-hedged emigrant of 
Europe a free American, so, too, did it need fully a century of 
emergencies to mold from the pioneer, the borderer and the 
partisan the real American soldier. For years the American 
colonist was but a transplanted Englishman, an expatriated 
Dutchman, an " assisted " German, Frenchman or Swede. 
These fought, when necessity compelled them, against Indian 
marauder or border enemy ; they resisted, when personal griev- 
ances inflamed or local leaders urged them, the invasion of their 
assumed " rights," but they never marched, as Americans, step 
to step and shoulder to shoulder, until the final invasion of 
Canada and the first drum.-beats of revolution cemented them 
together as Americans, as brothers conscious of their own 
strength and needs. 

It was this lack of union that brought the rebellion of Bacon 
and the bold stand of Leisler to naucrht. And thoug^h each 
colony, as it grew in numbers and in strength, organized its 
able-bodied fighting-men into some semblance of a provincial 



COLOiXIAL FIGHTING-MEN. 69 

militia, these "bulwarks of the state" did but Httle in the way 
of concerted action, and did that Httle grudgingly. It takes 
a great motive to change a partisan into a patriot. 

As, around its church or block-house or ragged fort of logs, 
each struggling settlement grew, the earlier home-guards — 
which might be Captain Standish's 

" Twelve men, all equipped, having each his rest and his matchlock, 
Eighteen shillings a month, together with diet and pillage," 

or might be the " three and fifty raw and tired Marylanders " 
whom " that noble, right valiant, and politic soldier " Thomas 
Cornwallis led against the Susquehannas — developed into 
the Train-Bands or Military-Bands common to each colony. 

While from time to time the red-coat orarrisons of the kinor 
became familiar sights in the larger towns, it was chiefiv upon 
these Train-Bands, made up of their own numbers, that the 
people of the colonies depended for their military strength. 
" We know, from more than one incident," says Mr. Doyle, 
" that there was no lack of individual courage or soldierly skill 
among the settlers." 

In every province the able-bodied male " freeholders " were 
held subject to military duty. When occasion demanded they 
could be called upon for active service. The charter of the 
Maryland province invested the proprietors with the right to 
" call out and arm the whole fighting population, wage war, 
take prisoners, and slay alien enemies ; also to exercise martial 
law in case of insurrection." In Massachusetts each town, from 
the earliest days, had its own military company, for service in 
which every man was liable, excepting the "magistrates, elders, 
deacons, shipwrights, millers and fishermen." 

The law of 1766 required all males in the colony to attend 



70 COLONIAL FIGHTING-MEN. 

military exercise and service. Each company of foot in the colo- 
nial militia was composed of musketeers and pikemen ; two 
thirds bearing the matchlocks and the cumbersome "rest," one 
third carrying the long and murderous-looking pikes, or spears. 

While the demands of farm and merchandise were held 
superior to those of war and while the colonist-soldier was ever 
slow to leave these until their protection became an absolute 
necessity the records of those old days show the train-band-man 
to have been an important factor in the life and growth of 
every settlement. "In the seventeenth century," says Mr. 
Lodse, " all men went armed ; even the farmers wore swords, 
and the military spirit was wide-spread and ardent. All adults 
were in the militia and the training-day, when the soldiery went 
out to drill with pike and musket, was the great break in the 
dark monotony of daily life." 

At the outbreak of the great English revolution of 1688 — a 
revolution that gave fresh impulse to the longings for personal 
liberty in America — the population of the colonies was less 
than two hundred thousand. Of this number perhaps thirty 
thousand may be considered a fair esti;nate for the fighting pop- 
ulation — the persons able to bear arms. But of this latter esti- 
mate a small proportion only were really men-at-arms, members 
of the train-bands. Captain Underbill's "army," which, in 1640, 
at the instigation of the treacherous and bloody-minded Kieft 
he led out from Dutch New York against the defenseless 
Indians thereabouts, consisted of but one hundred and twenty 
men. The force at the head of which Captain John Mason, in 
1637, marched from the Connecticut country to the extermi- 
nation of the warlike Pequots was less than an hundred men. 
In 1675 the joint " army " of Massachusetts, Connecticut and 
Plymouth, raised under the spur of desperate necessity to fight 



COLONIAL FJGHrLNG-MEN. 71 

the Indian warrior Philip of Pokanoket and drawn from a 
population of some seventy thousand souls, amounted to but 
eleven hundred men. The six free companies or train-bands of 
New York who in 1689, united under the energetic Leisler to 
strike if need be for the Stadtholder king and civil liberty num- 
bered less than five hundred men ; the whole provincial force 
that in that summer of 1689 responded to the summons of the 
first colonial congress and gathered on the northern frontier 
for the invasion of Canada fell far below the eioht hundred and 
fifty men promised by the congress. 

In fact, no considerable nor adequate military force was 
enlisted in the colonies for warlike purposes until the mid-years 
of the eighteenth century showed to England and her colonies, 
alike, that if America was to be the heritage of Englishmen the 
struggle with France must be a united one and fought to the 
bitter end. Then, at last, both king and colonist put forth 
their greatest strength. And in the seven years of war that 
broke the power of France in America and ended in triumph 
on the historic heights of Quebec no small share of the glory 
as of the fighting must be accorded to the now-aroused " pro- 
vincials " whom British officers and soldiers so affected to 
despise. 

This studied contempt of regulars for volunteers is but a 
part of the always-existing arrogance of military aristocracy. 
It held place in the legions of Rome as in the cohorts of 
Xerxes and reaches back even to that older day when by the 
Wells of Harod the chosen three hundred of Gideon lapped 
the water " like a dog " and were alone of all the Israelitish host, 
deemed worthy to fight the Midianites. 

But never, surely, was there less reason for this professional 
bias than in the days of the colonial fighting-men of America. 



72 COLONIAL FIGILTLXG-MEN. 

It was the South CaroHna militiamen who, rallying to the 
defense of their struggling colony in 1706, made so spirited an 
attack upon the French invaders that they drove back Le 
Feboure in defeat across Charleston bar with nearl)' one half of 
his eight hundred men killed or prisoners. It was the fifty 
Carolina volunteers of Governor Moore who, in 1702, plunged 
through the Georgia forests to the attack of the boastful Span- 
iards and established the claim of England to all the southern 
country as far as the walls of Saint Augustine. In the dis- 
astrous and horribly mismanaged expedition of 1739, by which 
England was to conquer the Spanish possessions of Mexico and 
Peru, it was the "provincials" who won the only fame that 
came from that ill-starred endeavor as, all unsupported, they 
led in the storming of the San Lazaro fortress of Carthagena ; 
while of the thousands who left their bones in that pestilential 
climate nine tenths were the contemned " provincials." It was 
a New Hampshire volunteer, William Vaughn, who in the 
attack on Louisburg in 1745 — an enterprise in which, it is 
asserted, '* the provincial forces displayed courage, activity and 
fortitude that would have distinguished veteran troops" — cap- 
tured the royal French battery and with only thirteen men held 
it against all the enemy sent for its retaking. It was John 
Stark and his five hundred New Hampshire foresters who 
marched through the trackless wilderness that lay between the 
Connecticut and the Hudson, compassed the reduction of Crown 
Point and shed about the only light that fell upon the disgrace- 
ful defeat at Ticonderoga. 

It was Phineas Lyman, the commander of the New England 
volunteers — "a man of uncommon martial endowments" — 
who, in 1755, won the victory at Lake George; and, on the 
same fatal day of Dieskau's defeat it was Macginnes and his two 



COL OA lAL FIGHTING-MEN. 



73 



hundred provincials who met and tlioroughlv defeated a superior 
French force at the portage of Fort Fdward. It was Benjamin 
Franklin of Pennsylvania, the father of the American militia 
(of whom Logan wrote : " I principally esteem Benjamin 
Franklin for saving the country by his contriving the militia"), 




A MUSTEK OK Cul-i i.\ 1 Al. .MILITIA U.\ IJUSluN COMMON. 



who, when elected in 1744 to the command of one of the reg- 
iments he had raised, declined the honor of leadership and him- 
self marched in the ranks and did his sentry duty, carrying a 
musket as " a humble volunteer." It was Peyronney, the Vir- 
ginia captain, who at Braddock's terrible defeat in 1755, "when 
those they call regulars ran like sheep before the hounds," still 



74 COLONIAL FIGHTING-MEN. 

held the fight with his valiant colony men until he and nearly 
every man in his company were killed. It was George Wash- 
inoton the Virmnia colonel ("that heroic youth," so wrote 
Davies, the New Jersey minister, " whom I cannot but hope 
Providence has preserved in so ^signal a manner for some 
important service to his country " ) who, on that same awful 
day, when the king's soldiers fell or fled before the Indian 
ambuscade, saved the rout from being an utter massacre; though 
shot at until two horses fell under him and his coat was riddled 
with bullets, he still protected the retreat, with what Braddock 
had contemptuously termed his " raw American militia." It was 
the men of Monckton's brigade — three out of every four of 
them being " provincials" — who stood the chief shock of the 
conflict on the Plains of Abraham where on "the battle-field of 
the Celtic and Saxon races " the valor of their stand gave victory 
to England in that one of the decisive battles of the world that 
closed the long struggle for supremacy in America with the 
death of the heroic but victorious Wolfe. 

Of this final and greatest endeavor of the colonial fighting- 
men the story has become a twice-told tale. But it is worth 
relating here, as that of a struggle in which the undervalued 
" provincials " bravely bore their part and, waking to a sense of 
their real strength, made the Plains of Abraham but the fore- 
runner of the yet grander plain known as the Common of 
Lexington. 

The mid-years of the eighteenth century had come. For 
nearly an hundred and fifty years had England and France 
been crowding one another in the western world, each claiming 
its ownership, each determined to possess it. The success of 
England, though clearly foreshadowed, had not as yet been 
apparent. Canada might be doomed but France defended her- 



COLONIAL FIGHTING-MEN. ;5 

self right valiantly. Louisburg had fallen, Acadia had been 
conquered, but to the northwest, above the rock-bound fortresses 
of Quebec and Montreal, the Bourbon banner of t\\Qjleiir-de-lis 
still floated in triumph. France still held the key to the con- 
tinent and in the great valleys of the west the blue uniforms 
of her guardsmen garrisoned all the rapidly-growing outposts. 

The governors of New France were energetic and aggressive. 
To the grim and martial Frontenac had succeeded the politic 
De Callieres, the warlike Vaudreuil, the energetic Beauhar- 
nais, the wily Galissoniere and La Jonquiere, admiral of France. 
Following him came, in turn, the impetuous Duquesne and yet 
another Vaudreuil — the last of the French governors. Equal 
in valor, though ever at odds with their official superiors, stood 
the royal commandants, than whom none were braver in fight 
than the last : Dieskau, who fell at Lake George, and Mont- 
calm, the noble and heroic — Montcalm, whose career in Canada 
has been pronounced "a wonderful struggle against destiny."' 

England opposed but inferior leaders to these energetic 
sons of France. Braddock, the obstinate, fell in utter and 
almost ignominious defeat ; Shirley and Johnston had neither 
the pluck nor the ability to follow up the advantages of success. 
Loudon was a pompous do-nothing, Abercrombie a slow and 
heavy-witted incapable, Amherst was a stolid and oyer-cautious 
martinet, Webb a timid and dilatory tactician. Only witli 
Wolfe — young, brilliant, energetic and intrepid — did anything 
like real success come to the arms of England. 

Sailing from conquered Louisburg, where his great ability 
had already displayed itself, Wolfe, in June, 1759, headed toward 
Quebec. The slow methods of England had enabled France to 
succor her principal stronghold in Canada and when Wolfe landed 
on the Island of Orleans Amherst's twelve thousand men still 



76 COLONIAL FLGHTING-MEN. 

lingered on the shores of Lake Champlain. " The whole mass 
of the people of Canada," says Bancroft, "had been called to 
arms," and Wolfe, with his less than eight thousand men, found 
himself fronted by Montcalm with a force of fourteen thousand, 
not counting the Indian allies." The entire summer was wasted 
in ineffectual attempts on either side to obtain the advantage ; 
Amheist and his expected reinforcements did not appear and 
at last on the third of September Wolfe decided upon a 
movement as adventurous as it was hazardous. 

Sick in body but intrepid in spirit he ordered his men to 
scale the precipitous heights above Quebec. Here was the one 
weak point of the enemy; here must the assault be made. 
Once determined upon this was quickly done. Aided by "sheer 
good luck quite as much as by skill and courage " Wolfe and 
his little force — exactly four thousand eight hundred and 
twenty-six in number — in the gray of a September morning, 
silently pulled themselves up the steep incline and at sunrise, 
says Mr. Clinton, " looked down from the Heights of Abraham 
upon the city which for nearly three months they had wearily 
watched across the water." 

Thus outgeneraled and surprised Montcalm saw that instant 
action was his only salvation. With his seventy-five hundred 
fiohting men he marched to meet the enemy. The battle was 
joined at once. On came the French ; but not until they were 
within forty yards of the "thin red line" of England was 
their fire returned. Then the iron hail burst from the Eng- 
lish ranks; another volley quickly followed and, as the smoke 
cleared away, Wolfe charged the wavering French line. The 
blue coats broke in panic; alike English and French comman- 
der fell mortally wounded and as the French battalions turned 
in fiioht the fate of Canada was sealed. One of the decisive 



COLONIAL FIGHTING-MEN. -j-j 

battles of the world was fought and won in precisely ten min- 
utes by the watch. 

Montreal fell in the following summer. Rogers and his 
American rangers captured the western posts and with the 
close of 1 760 the last hope of France was extinguished. The 
lilies of the French king fell in surrender; the red cross of St. 
George waved over conquered fortresses and captured posts, 
and America was English from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf. 

The thirteen colonies were wild with joy. They were saved. 
The always-present danger of French conquest was over forever 
and its final overthrow was due as much to American valor as to 
English discipline. Though British councillors and commanders 
might sniff and sneer, the people knew in how great measure 
they had helped to the end. " Provincials," says Bancroft, 
"had saved the remnants of Braddock's army; provincials had 
conquered Acadia; provincials had defeated Dieskau." And 
provincials, too, had captured invulnerable Louisburg, had de- 
stroyed Fort Frontenac, reduced Niagara and planted the 
English flag in victory on the ruined bastions of Duquesne. 

Such a schooling in warfare as that was not to go unheeded. 
Alike ranger and forester, militiaman and volunteer gained the 
inspiration of victory from this, the last stand against France. 
The day for yet greater deeds was close at hand and the colonial 
fighting-man was to become the defender and the deliverer of his 
home-land. English contempt was to develop into English 
tyranny and at the call of their leaders the despised provincials 
of the past were to become the patriots of the future. From 
the ranks of the village train-bands and the colonial militiamen 
was to step ready and armed for resistance the determined and 
now immortal Minute-man. The real American soldier was 
ready at last. 



CHAPTER IV. 



MINUTE-MEN AND CONTINENTALS. 




R. BRATTLE presents 
his Duty to his Excel- 
lency Gov. Gage, he 
apprehends it his Duty 
to acquaint his Excel- 
lency from Time to 
Time with every Thing- 
he hears and knows to 
be true and is of Im- 
portance in these trou- 
blesome Times, which 
is the Apology Mr. 
Brattle makes for troublins: the General with this Letter. 
Capt. Minot of Concord, a very worthy Man, this Minute 
informed Mr. Brattle that there had been repeatedly made 
pressing Applications to him to warn his Company to meet at 
One Minutes Warning, equipt with Arms and Ammunition, 
according to Law : he had constantly denied them, adding, if 
he did not gratify them he should be constrained to quit his 
Farms and Town ; Mr. Brattle told him he had better do 
that than lose his Life and be hanged for a Rebel." 

Thus, on the twenty-ninth of August, 1774, ran the opening 

78 



MINUTE-MEN AND CONTINENTALS. 79 

of a letter addressed to the commanding officer of the British 
troops in Boston by WilHam Brattle, the brigadier in command 
of the provincial militia. For Boston was garrisoned by the 
troops of King George. The temper of her people was hot 
and aggressive toward England and the authorities across the 
water had determined to nip rebellion in the bud. 

It was a note of warning, but it came too late. Military 
rule in America meant an increase of oppression ; and to further 
oppression men were unalterably opposed. Resistance was duty. 
To this duty the colonists were urged and those especially 
who enrolled in the militia were implored to hold themselves 
ready for any emergency. And at last the emergency came. 

For years the relations between king and colonists had 
been growing more and more strained. Freedom from abso- 
lute influence of the kingly authority had for more than a gen- 
eration been creating in men a desire for greater personal 
freedom. There is a mighty impetus toward emancipation in 
the un- bridged distance of three thousand miles of sea. 

So at last out of dispute came action. Tyranny on the one 
side and unyielding opposition on the other ended as it only 
could end — in blows, and when the clash came the " minute's 
warning " had its full effect. The Minute-men were ready and 
alert. 

The first shock of arms came in the Massachusetts colony. 
When the British government sent orders to General Gage, 
the commander in Boston, that he should bid his troops fire 
upon the people when he should deem it necessary, the match 
was put to the tinder. The people's protest showed itself in 
the storing of munitions of war for their own defense and in 
the drill and continual readiness of the Minute-men. In 1775 
came the climax. 



8o MINUTE-MEN AND CONTINENTALS. 

" On the nineteenth da}' of April, one thousand seven hun- 
dred and seventy-five, a day to be remembered by all Ameri- 
cans of the present generation, and which ought and doubtless 
will be handed down to ages yet unborn, the troops of Britain, 
unprovoked, shed the blood of sundry of the loyal American 
subjects of the British king in the field of Lexington." So ran 
what Dr. Hale calls " the prophetic introduction " of the report 
of the Battle of Lexington which the provincial congress of 
Massachusetts forwarded in haste to England. 

Of that notable nineteenth of April how often has the 
story been told. And yet, who tires of reading it ? From the 
instant when Paul Revere causht the flash of the sis^nal Ian- 
tern from the pigeon-haunted belfry of the North Church in 
Boston town and rode his ride of warning the story grows in 
interest. 

" And lo ! as he looks, on the belfry's height 

A glimmer and then a gleam of light ! 

He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns, 

But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight 

A second lamp in the belfry burns ! 

A hurrv of hoofs in a village street, 

A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark, 

And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark 

Struck out bv a steed flying fearless and fleet: 

That was all ! And yet, through the gloom and the light, 

The fate of a nation was riding that night; 

And the spark struck out bv the steed in his flight. 

Kindled the land into flame with its heat." 

The land was readv to be kindled. The anxious waiting 
of Paul Revere as, all 

" ini])atient to mount and ride 
Booted and siiurred, with a heavy stride," 



MINUTE-MEN AND CONTINENTALS. 81 

he paced the grassy shore of the "sluggish Charles" was but 
typical of the unsettled feeling that pervaded all the colonies. 
Not alone in Massachusetts were bold men urfjine action. 
North and south the mysterious " Sons of Liberty " were form- 
ing. In more than one section were to be found those who 
expressed not only their willingness but their desire to fight. 

From that historic seventh of October, 1765, when in the 
city of New York, a congress of the thirteen colonies voiced 
the protest of the people against the tyranny of England down 
to the climax-year that precipitated revolution, the people were 
everywhere preparing. The spirit of resistance broke out 
again and again. The angry crowd that danced about the 
effigy of Oliver the stamp-master, as it dangled from a Boston 
elm, the five hundred hard riders who stopped the way of 
Ingersoll the Connecticut collector and forced him to resign 
his office, fiing aloft his hat and hurrah three times for " Liberty 
and Property," the New York mob that broke open the stables 
of the royal governor, dragged out his coach, mounted his Ex- 
cellency's effigy upon it and then burned the whole equipage 
on the Bowling Green, the four hundred Marylanders who 
assembled at Frederick town armed with " oruns and toma- 
hawks " and threatened to break up the provincial government, 
the indignant people of North Carolina who threatened the 
British war-sloop that bore the stamped paper, seized its boat, 
which they dragged on a cart to Wilmington and there sur- 
rounding the governor's house threatened to burn both house 
and Governor if he did not accede to their demands, the mut- 
terings of opposition in Pennsylvania, in South Carolina and 
in Georgia that rose and fell with popular opinion and were 
displayed in the customary mobs and effigy burnings — all these 
were but the precursors of that determined opposition to 



2,2 MINUTE-MEN AND CONTINENTALS. 

tyranny that, after ten years of smouldering, was fanned into a 
flame by the famous stand of the Minute-men on Lexington 
Common and about the old North Bridge at Concord — the 
historic span of America's Rubicon, the sacred spot 



" Where once the embattled farmers stood 
And fired the shot heard round the world." 

It was that day's fight that showed the courage and tested the 
spirit of America's citizen soldiery. 

Little need to tell here the story of Lexington. Every school- 
boy is familiar with its details and not a few schoolboys of that 

distant day seemed to 
have been filled with 
prophetic inspirations. 
It is related that as Lord 
Percy's troops marched 
out of Boston heading 
for the highway that led 
toward distant Concord 
they played with much 
spirit the shrill but sar- 
castic strains of Yankee 
Doodle. " Ho, ho ! " 
jeeringly called out a smart Roxbury boy perched on a con- 
venient stone wall, " you fellows go out by ' Yankee Doodle ; ' 
you'll come back fast enough by ' Chevy Chase.' " 

And a " Chevy Chase " it was indeed. The Percy of that 
famous day essayed the role of his ancestor of three centuries 
back only to repeat on Massachusetts highways the story of 
that " woful hunting " in Scottish woods. The old ballad tells 
us how 




" I'HEY HUNG ON THE SKIRTS OF THE RETREAT. 



MINUTE-MEN AND CONTINENTALS. ?,^ 

" To drive the deer with hound and horn 

Earl Percy took his way; 
The child may rue that is unborn 

The hunting of that day." 

The " embattled farmers " of the fair New England fields like 
the supporters of another Douglas rallied to protect their home- 
lands and by their acts said as did he 

" Show me,"' said he, " whose men you be 

That hunt so boldly here, 
That, without my consent, do chase 

And kill my fallow-deer ? " 

The Minute-men won the day. Baffled and dispirited the 
British marauders straggled back to Boston. Like bull-dogs 
the now aroused farmers snapped and growled at their heels ; 
they hung on the skirts of the retreat ; with flint-lock and 
king"s-arm they emphasized their protests and only desisted 
when the British troops were safe again beneath the protecting 
batteries of Boston town. 

Here was war at last. The tidings of that long day's fight 
fired the colonies from Maine to Georgia. North, west and 
south the stirring tidings sped. It was on Wednesday the 
nineteenth of April, 1775, that Lord Percy's routed columns 
ran their twenty-mile race with death. On Sunday morning 
following, a swift courier clattered down the Broad Way bring- 
in o- the storv of the fis^ht to New York. Elizabeth, New Bruns- 
wick, Princeton, Philadelphia, quickly heard the news. On the 
twenty-seventh it was in Baltimore and in the early days of 
May the southern colonies knew of the bravery of the Massa- 
chusetts farmers and cheered the tidings lustily. The Minute- 
men of the old Bay colony had precipitated revolution. 



84 MINUTE-MEN AND CONTINENTALS. 

On that very tenth of ^lay when the men of Georgetown in 
South CaroHna flung aloft their caps at the news of Lexington 
fight, away to the North, amid the rolling hills that make so 
picturesque the verdant shores of Lake Champlain, another 
body of New England Minute-men, gathered from among the 
New Hampshire Grants and known as the Green Mountain 
Boys, made a dash upon the enemy that has become famous in 
history. 

Led on by Ethan Allen, a mountain partisan, and Benedict 
Arnold, a Connecticut horse-jockey, less than an hundred Green 
Mountain Boys surprised the British post of Ticonderoga in 
the early dawn of that May morning. Thus unceremoniously 
routed from his bed, the sleepy commandant had the distinction 
of making the first actual surrender of the king's property to 
the revolting colonists, yielding with as good grace as possible 
to the rather ponipous summons of the blustering Allen who 
summoned him to surrender the fort '' in the name of the Great 
Jehovah and the Continental Congress ! " 

"The careful annalists," says Dr. Hale, " observe that the 
Continental Congress did not meet until after the surrender of 
Ticonderoga." But little did Allen care. He had a point to 
make and he made it. No one comprehended better than did 
this bold borderer the force of the questionable old adage: "All 
is fair in love and w^ar." 

Lexinoton and TiconderoQ-a were but the awakeninc;. 
Minute-man and militiaman, responding to the call of the 
Committee of Safetv, hurried to the investment of Boston. 
They had whipped the British in the open field; now they 
would push them into the ocean. 

Mr. Frothingham has a story to the effect that when on one 
of those last days of May, 1775, the British generals, Howe, 



MINUTE-MEN AND CONTINENTALS. 



8S 



Clinton and Burgo^'ne, -^vere sailing into Boston harbor with 
reinforcements for the army of the king, they spoke a packet, 
outward-bound. Burgoyne hailed the skipper : " What news 
above ? " he cried. Back came the answer that Boston town 
was surrounded by ten thousand countrymen. " How many 




GRKFN MOTINTATN BOYS ON IHE MARCH. 



regulars in Boston ? " asked the Englishman. " About five 
thousand." "What!" shouted Burgoyne, "can ten thousand 
Yankee Doodles shut up five thousand soldiers of the king.'^ 
Well ; well ! Only let us get in there and we'll soon find 
elbow-room." 



86 MINUTE-MEN AND CONTINENTALS. 

But that elbow-room never came. Closer and tighter about 
the beleaguered town drew the cordon of besieging yeomanry. 
In all the country "round farmers and village folk grasped 
musket and pikes ready for action, and hurried to the places of 
rendezvous — and on the seventeenth of June the Provincial 
Conoi^ess, assembled at Watertown, issued an order that ran as 
follows : 

" Whereas the hostile Incursions this Country is exposed to, and the frequent Alarms 
we may expect from the Military Operations of our Enemies, make it necessary that the good 
People of this Colony be on their^Guard and prepared at all Times to resist their Attacks, and 
to aid and assist their Brethren : Therefore, Rcsoked, That it be and hereby is recommended 
to the Militia in all Parts of this Colony, to hold themselves m Readiness to march at A 
MINUTE'S WARNING, to the Relief of any Place that may be attacked, or to the Support 
of our Armv, with at least twenty Cartridges or rounds of Powder and Ball. And. to prevent all 
Confusion or Delays, It is further recommended to the Inhabitants of this Colony, living on 
the Seacoasts, or within twenty Miles of them, that they carry their Arms and Ammunition 
svith them to Meeting, on the Sabbath and other Days, \\hen they meet for public Worship." 

Summons and caution came none too soon. On that very 
seventeenth of June the environed British made one bold push 
for release. Their jailers were prepared for them. The battle 
of Bunker Hill was fought. 

It proved the sturdiness as it tested the courage of the 
American Minute-man. A moral victorv althouo:h an actual 
defeat, the battle of Bunker Hill showed alike to Ens^lish sol- 
dier and to Colonial tory that Boston-town was not to be held 
in safety for the king. 

On the same historic seventeenth of June the Continental 
Congress, in session at Philadelphia, appointed as "general- 
issimo " of the soldiers of revolt, Colonel George Washington of 
Virginia. Fighting men from all the New England colonies, 
volunteers from the middle provinces, riflemen from Maryland 
and Virginia and the further south, led by their own officers 




T H E .MI N U r K - M I-: N . 



MINUTE-MEN AND CONTINENTALS. 89 

and making in all a loosely-organized force of more than 
sixteen thousand men, encamped upon the hills and plains to 
the west of Boston. 

Under a spreading elm on the commons of Cambridge — 
a tree that yet stands, strong and sturdy, the best memorial of 
that time of blossoming revolution — minute-men and rifle- 
men, militiamen and volunteers were mustered on the third of 
July, 1775; ^i^d there "His Excellency George Washington, 
Esquire, Captain-General and Commander-in-Chief of the 
Forces of the Thirteen United Colonies " assumed command 
of the soldiers of freedom. Revolution was organized. The 
Minute-men of Lexington and Bunker Hill became from that 
day forward the Continental Army. 

But, before we turn from this opening chapter in the real 
story of the American soldier, let us glance at those historic 
figures that, by their deeds, so royally illustrate its pages. 
These Minute-men, this raw militia, that faced and foueht the 
well-trained red-coats of England — who were they ? What 
were they like ? 

Soldiers we can scarcely call them, for the soldier presup- 
poses discipline, drilling and training. Some crude instruction 
of this sort they may have had. Some of the men, indeed, 
were veterans of the colonial conflicts that had preceded the 
Revolution, but as a rule these first fighters for liberty were 
busy toilers all, farm-born or village bred. Hastily summoned 
and still more hastily accoutered they left the plough in the 
furrow, the tool on the bench, the quill in the ink and, all 
unused to war, sprang to arms. In motley uniforms, in half- 
uniforms, in no uniform at all, with here a military coat, there 
a three-cornered hat or perhaps only a home-made cockade 
pinned to the homespun lapels, with the rusty flint-lock 



90 



MINUTE-MEN AND CONTINENTALS. 



caught down from above the broad cliimney-piece where it had 
hung for years as heirloom or trophy, a motley array, lackijig in 
discipline, over-generous of advice to their superiors — neighbors, 
comrades and brothers all, they had swarmed to the ragged 
fences that flanked the king s highway between Concord and 
Boston ; they had camped in most unmilitary style on hillside 
or in field, fallen behind the hastily-tossed earthworks on 
Bunker Hill or died beneath the blossoming apple-trees beside 
the flowing Mystic. 

And the officers about whom these earlier fighters rallied 
were a scarcely less motley group than were the men who but 
haltingly acknowledged their authority. Here in the first 
fights for freedom, within the straggling camps or meeting in 
that first council of war at tht: foot of pleasant Prospect Hill 
came the waverer, the blusterer, the man of moderate experi- 
ence, the would-be martinet, the newly-elected captain, ignorant 
of tactics and uncertain as to the proper use of his sword — 
food for merriment and contempt among the trained warriors 
of the English king, but patriotic none the less, formidable 
because sheathed in the justice of their cause. 

"Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just ; 
And he but naked, though locked up in steel, 
Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted" — 

Surely never did those noble words which the great poet puts 
into the mouth of an English king find fitter application than 
toward these patriot leaders in the new England across the 
seas, where once ao^ain the old issue between tvrannv and 
personal freedom was to be fought to the end. 

Here, to the leadership at the camp on Prospect Hill, came 
Heath the only colonel or, at least, the first of the colonels; 



MINUTE-MEN AND CONTINENTALS. 91 

here, too, came Artemas Ward, " commander-in-chief " by 
sufferance; Prescott of Pepperell, the valiant veteran of the 
Canadian campaign; Putnam, the modern Cincinnatus, who 
literally turned from the plough to the battle-field; Warren the 
Roxbury doctor and busy committee-man, who fought as a 
volunteer and fell in the rush from the captured earthworks, 
the noblest victim of the stand on Bunker Hill; Knowlton 
the brave Connecticut leader ;Gridley the cannonier who had 
trained the guns on Louisburg; Stark the doughty Indian 
fighter from the New Hampshire Grants and Reed the equally 
intrepid son of those granite hills; Brooks, the Medford major; 
Thomas the Kingston doctor; Spencer of Connecticut; Greene 
of Rhode Island — men whose names are indissolubly linked 
to those opening days of revolution and whose memories 
should linger with their countrymen as of those who by 
their courage, their endurance and their sturdy patriotism fired 
and cemented the stock from which was to spring the real 
American soldier. 

"Will he fight?" asked General Gage, as, in the battery on 
Copp's Hill the tory lawyer who stood by the General's side 
pointed out the stalwart figure of his rebel brother-in-law, 
rallying the farmers behind the rudely-lined breastworks on 
Bunker Hill. 

" Fight ! " was the reply, " yes, yes ; you may depend on him 
to do that to the very last drop of blood in his veins." 

A notable figure in those stirring days was this same rebel 
brother-in-law Colonel William Prescott. A type of the Ameri- 
can fighters for freedom, his statue to-day fitly crowns the 
height which he so valiantly defended and seems to guard the 
tall gray shaft that commemorates for us that eventful seven- 
teenth of June. Fifty years of age, a splendid figure, handsome 



92 MINUTE-MEN AND CONTINENTALS. 

of face, full of energy and of inspiring words, he wore that hot 
June day in the trenches a simple uniform — the blue coat, 
lapped and faced and adorned with a single row of buttons; 
the knee breeches and silver-buckled shoes, and the inevitable 
three-cornered hat, while his directing hand grasped the un- 
sheathed sword whose temper had already been proven in 
battle for that English king who was now no longer his master. 

Of a like type and of equal valor were the men who com- 
manded and the men who followed, the men who fought and 
those who fell in the opening battles of the war. 

It was these fiohters from the New EnQ;land farms and their 
brethren from the plantations of the further South — frank, 
fearless, illy-disciplined, determined and alert, who gathered on 
the commons of Cambridge and, merging themselves into the 
Continental Army, accepted George Washington of Virginia 
as their commander and generalissimo. 

Such then, when he took command at Cambridge, were the 
troops of Washington. " A hardy militia, brave and patriotic, 
but illy-armed, undisciplined, unorganized and wanting in almost 
everything necessary for successful war." 

What could he make of them ? 

Full justice can never be done to the ability of the first 
American General. Hampered and harassed by the uncer- 
tainty of his forces, by the lack of proper munitions of war, by 
the half-hearted measures of a hesitating Congress and even 
by the wavering desires of the people whose interests he was 
to defend, he was yet able, with all the hazards against him, 
to drive a disciplined British Army from Boston and to hold 
agamst gathering odds the important city of New York. De- 
feated at Brooklyn by a force of British regulars outnumbering 
him three to one, he saved his army by one of the most mas- 



MINUTE-MEN AND CONTINENTALS. 95 

terly retreats known to history. With forces continually 
decimated by desertions and by the unceremonious leave-taking 
of militiamen whose short terms of service were constantly ex- 
piring, he yet so maneuvered, marched and handled his dis- 
heartened forces as to strike, at just the critical moment, at the 
very center of Britain's chief dependence — the hireling Hes- 
sians at Trenton. And thus he grasped out of almost certain 
defeat the victory that strengthened the patriotic cause and re- 
sulted finally in the one measure that he knew was necessary 
for success — the organization and establishment of a regular 
army. 

America s merriest . Christmas was, really, the one that 
promised to be its sorriest — that eventful twenty-fifth of 
December, 1776, when Washington's meagre force pushed 
through the floating ice of the Delaware and captured the 
unsuspecting Hessians. " The life of a nation," says Mr. 
Lodge, " was at stake." Washington's brief campaign at 
Trenton and at Princeton has rightly been characterized as 
quite as brilliant and as full of skill and daring as is anything 
in the annals of modern warfare. Mr. Lodge asserts that, if 
Washington had never fought another battle, this decisive 
action on the Delaware would entitle him to the place of a 
great commander. 

That it was decisive no one who reads history carefully can 
question. It reassured a doubting nation, organized strength 
out of weakness, brought triumph from disaster and, as one of 
its immediate results, merged all the shifting forces of the 
unreliable Continentals into the definite and finally victorious 
army of the Soldiers of Liberty. 

That brief period from the muster beneath the elms of Cam- 
bridge Common in the warm July weather of 1775 to the cold 



96 



MINUTE-MEN AND CONTINENTALS. 



Christmas night on the Delaware in the dying days of 1776 is 
crowded with incident. It saw the disastrous invasion of Can- 
ada that ended in defeat at Montreal and Quebec ; the death of 
the gallant Montgomery, one of America's most promising gen- 
erals, and the daring of Arnold whose later treason, even, should 
not be permitted to eclipse his brilliant record amid Canadian 
snows. It saw the patriot victories in North Carolina; the 

gallant defense of 
Charleston by the 
heroic Moultrie ; 
the stubborn but 
hopeless effort to 
hold New York, 
the remarkable bat- 
tle of Brooklyn, the 
spirited engage- 
ments at Harlem 
Heights and White 
Plains. It brought 
to the front men 
whose names were 
to become famous 
as intrepid and gal- 
lant fighters; and, through the inefficiency of British generals 
and the tireless labors of Washington drew to what was in 
fact, if we regard the numbers engaged, but a trifling military 
campaign the attention and the plaudits of a watching world. 

A large, a veteran and a disciplined army, led by generals 
whom England esteemed her best, was out-maneuvered by a 
demoralized assemblage of untried and unreliable militiamen, 
" not m-uch superior," says General Cullom, " to an armed mob ; " 




THE CAMHKinC.E ELM. 



MINUTE-MEN AND CONl'INENTALS. 97 

but the one was held together by a machine-Hke discipline and 
backed by an obstinate tyranny, the other, unsatisfactory 
though it might be, was still inspired by a determined patriot- 
ism. When disaster seemed most certain triumph came forth, 
and out of the most unpromising surroundings there emerged, 
to carry the war to its close, the dauntless Soldiers of Liberty. 
Henceforward minute-man, militiaman and continental are to 
stand through all that struggle for freedom as the veteran 
American Soldier, 



CHAPTER V. 



SOLDIERS OF LIBERTY, 



IR, the Hessians have surrendered!" 
Thus, in joyful tones, came Baylor's 
report as, in a lull in that sharp 
morning's fight at Trenton, he gal- 
loped up to the anxious Commander- 
in-Chief. 

" Thank God ! " was Washington's 
devout rejoinder. And that fervent 
exclamation of gratitude, the sim- 
plest and yet the strongest that 
man can utter, was freighted with 
a still deeper meaning than even 
Washington himself could imagine. 
For that triumphant report of the 
hard-riding Baylor bore in its one 
brief sentence the success of the Revolution, 

It is always darkest just before the dawn. When Glover's 
fishermen-soldiers from Marblehead, on that cold December 
night of 1776, pushed out into the floating ice the clumsy boats 
that were to carry Washington's troops across the Delaware the 
expedition seemed to be but a forlorn hope. 

The little force of twenty-five hundred men, whose ill-shod 

9S 




SOLDIERS OF LIBERTY. 99 

feet had literally marked their march across the snow with 
blood, constituted almost the entire fighting force at Washing- 
ton's disposal. His army had, as yet, no compelling law to hold 
its numbers intact or keep its volunteers reliable. Here to-day 
and gone to-morrow seemed to be the rule with the home-raised 
militia who had ranged themselves under his banner. 

Something must be done. The more than thirty thousand 
men who made up the British Army about New York so far 
outnumbered the Continental fighting-force that could be counted 
on for actual service that ruin to the patriot cause seemed almost 
inevitable. But despair formed no part of Washington's in- 
domitable nature. Success must be won. In the most somber 
of those dark days he wrote to his brother, " I cannot entertain 
the idea that our cause will finally sink though it may remain 
for some time under a cloud." 

And it was from under this cloud that he determined to 
bring the cause that was dearer to him than life. When, erect 
but anxious, he directed from his open flat-boat the crossing of 
his little army from one icy bank to the other he literally, as Mr. 
Lodge asserts, " carried the American Revolution in his hands." 
This one stroke of Washington's generalship saved the cause 
of the colonies. For, apart from the moral effect of the victory, 
it aroused a hesitating Congress to agree to Washington's 
demand for a standing army. 

The enthusiasm that blazes into conflict and breaks into 
open rebellion against tyranny not unfrequently fails to stand 
the test of prolonged endeavor when the first frenzy of indig- 
nation is past. 

To a certain extent this was true of the American revolu- 
tionists. The valor that lined the fences and thronged the 
fields between Concord and Boston, that led the assault on 



loo SOLDIERS OF LIBERTY. 

Ticonderoga and held the breastworks on Bunker Hill grew 
lukewarm with long days of inaction in camp. Crops were 
growing in the home farm-lands ; work which seemed quite as 
important as forcing the English king to yield to colonial demands 
had been left to over-burdened housewives or to unskilled 
helpers. When their brief term of enlistments came to an 
end the volunteers were quite ready to hurry back to their crops, 
their stock or their neglected duties at home. 

So, again and again, the militia of the land, who acknowl- 
edged no central authority and were held only by their pledges 
to a short term of actual service would dwindle to a mere 
handful or be succeeded by raw levies who must be schooled 
to the demands and discipline of warfare. 

In a letter to the President of the congress, written after 
the defeat on Long Island and that masterly retreat from 
Brooklyn, Washington said : " The jealousy of a standing army 
and the evils to be apprehended from one are remote and in 
my judgment, situated and circumstanced as we are, not at all 
to be dreaded ; but the consequence of wanting one according 
to my ideas formed from the present view of things, is certain 
and inevitable ruin. For, if I was called upon to declare upon 
oath whether the militia have been most serviceable or hurtful, 
upon the whole, I should subscribe to the latter." 

He had his wish at last. On the twenty-seventh of Decem- 
ber, 1776, the very day after the brilliant dash upon the Hes- 
sians at Trenton, Congress " having maturely considered the 
present crisis and having perfect reliance on the wisdom, vigor 
and uprightness of General Washington," granted him the 
power as General of the United States to raise, organize and 
officer sixteen battalions of infantry, three thousand light- 
horsemen, three regiments of artillery and a corps of engineers. 



SOLDIERS OF LIBERTY. loi 

This was to be considered as in addition to the eighty-eight 
battahons furnished by the separate States. 

Here was high-sounding promise indeed, but it was never 
fully realized. It accomplished one excellent result, however, 
for it paved the way for the attainment of Washington's 
desires. For, though the numbers obtained were far too few 
for the always pressing needs of the revolted colonies and 
though the promises of the States were but meagerly fulfilled, 
a plan of enlistments for the term of at least three years kept 
up a standing force throughout the rest of the revolution. This 
supplied a basis on which Washington as commander-in-chief 
could frame his campaigns ; while the militia, called out for 
extra service when occasion demanded, enabled the Congress 
to keep a fair showing of a fighting-force always in the field. 

And yet, correct as was Washington's judgment and uncer- 
tain as was this fluctuating militia, hcnv often upon their action 
did victory depend .^ It was the minute-men and rnilit-ia of New 
England who gave the lie to the assertion of the bullying peers 
of Britain that the Americans would not fight. Before the 
guns of these same hastily-gathered militia-men the very flower 
of the British army reeled backward down the smoke-wreathed 
slope of Bunker Hill. It was the militia of the Mohawk 
Valley who stood the brunt of the bloody battle of Oriskany. 
It was the militia of New Hampshire and New York who 
stormed the earthworks at Bennington, captured or scattered 
the Hessian foeman and saved Mollie Stark from widowhood. 
It was the militia who triumphed over Burgoyne at Saratoga, 
decided the fate of the Revolution and made that famous en- 
oaoement one of the fifteen decisive battles of the world. It 
was the militia of the South — the men who marched with 
Pickens at Cliarleston, with Campbell and Sevier at King's 



I02 SOLDIERS OF LIBERTY. 

Mountain, with Stephens at Guilford and with Marion at Eutaw 
— who came to the assistance of the regular Continental troops 
and, again and again, turned defeat into victory. 

It is in no part the province of this volume to describe in de- 
tail the battles of the Revolution. Our duty lies rather in photo- 
graphing, as well as we are able, the American Soldier who 
fought for the liberty of his land. The story of the several 
engagements that begun at Lexington and ended at Yorktown 
has been so often told and re-told that to give it space here 
would be but rehearsing a many-times told tale. 

But every new battle, whether it ended in defeat or victory, 
made the American fighter still more a soldier and ever from 
the despair of the moment sprang a hope for the future. In 
whatever part of the country the tramp of British regulars 
startled the timid and angered the brave, the demand for imme- 
diate action brought a ready response. From farm and shop, 
from village and from clearing came the excited yeomanry 
hurrying to the support of the harassed Continentals. 

The very lack of any distinctive uniform among those 
hastily-gathered recruits served a double purpose, in that it was 
at once a test of their patriotism and a blind to the enemy. 

When, at Bennington, the aroused New England farmers 
answered the summons of the gallant Stark and encompassed 
the rear of Baum's heavily-armed Hessians the very manner of 
their coming disarmed suspicion. The detested foreigners were 
all regulars, "picked," says Mr. Fiske, "from the bravest of the 
troops which Ferdinand of Brunswick had led to victory at 
Creveld and Minden." What could a force of unskilled 
countrymen do against this historic prowess ? And yet 
Yankee shrewdness overmatched German tactics. Stealthily 
and leisurely, almost as if seeking protection, the little squads 



SOLDIERS OF LIBERTY. 



103 



of farmers, dressed in their long blue frocks and not over a 
dozen in a company, hung on the flanks of the German invaders 
or strolled carelessly to the rear. Good General Baum, a vet- 
eran of the stately European battle-fields counted these strag- 
glers as nothing more than the Tory farmers whom he had 




THE BATTLE OF ORlbKANV. 



expected to come within his lines, seeking protection from their 
rebel neighbors. But, ere the sun set, Bennington saw another 
sight. For when the Indian fighter Stark, at the head of five 
hundred militia, boldly charged the Hessians in front, these 
groups of supposed Tory farmers, now grown to five hundred 



I04 SOLDIERS OF LIBERTY. 

or more, levelled their muskets at the King's troops and, from 
rear and flank, poured in a murderous fire. Thus was Ben- 
nington made a victory for the Colonists. 

In like manner, of the forty-eight hundred men who rallied 
around Washinoton and, on the field of Princeton faced the 
veterans troops of England, more than three fifths were mer- 
chants, mechanics and farmers, ignorant of war. Inspired by 
the daring dash on the Hessian force at Trenton they had 
rushed from their homes, careless of mid-winter cold and full of 
the hope that, after all, the liberty they had begun to despair 
of was not impossible. 

When, upon what was at that day the very outskirts of 
civilization, St. Leger and his motley array of seventeen hun- 
dred mingled British, Tories and Indians, tramped into the 
Mohawk Valley, it was the eight hundred and more Dutchmen 
of that western frontier who rallied to the call of heroic old 
Herkimer and, amid the pelting rush of one of August's fiercest 
thunder-storms, fought and won the battle of Oriskany — "the 
bloodiest and most picturesque battle of the Revolution." 

When, later, the pompous declaration of Burgoyne that, 
with ten thousand men, he could promenade through America, 
ended in utter disaster at Saratoga, it was the supporting 
farmers from the country round and from the distant New 
England hills who fouijht that " battle of the husbandman," and 
o;ained a victory, of which it has been said that no martial event, 
from the battle of Marathon to that of Waterloo, exerted a 
greater influence upon human affairs. 

In the south, as has been shown, planters and freeholders 
sprang to arms whenever their homes were threatened. The 
unsteadiness of the militia in the early battles was nobly atoned 
for at King's Mountain, at the Cowpens and at Guilford. The 




' ( )ur fortress is the good greenwood, 
Our tent the cypress-tree." 



SOLDIERS OF LIBERTY. 107 

names of Morgan and Marion stand, side by side, with those of 
Herkimer and Stark. '•' Colonel Marion," complained Corn- 
wallis, " so wrought upon the minds of the people that there 
was scarcely an inhabitant between the Pedee and the Santee 
that was not in arms against us." 

Around the name of this dashing Southern leader song and 
story have thrown all the glamour of romance. There may be 
more of fiction than of fact in the legends that have come down 
to us, but even these at least breathe the spirit of the times while 
Bryant's stirring lines fitly emphasize the daring and the reck- 
lessness that made the name of " Marion's Men " a power in all 
that southern land : 

" Our band is few, but true and tried, 

Our leader frank and bold ; 
The British soldier trembles 

When Marion's name is told. 
Our fortress is the good greenwood, 

Our tent the cypress-tree ; 
We know the forest round us, 

As seamen know the sea. 
We know its walls of thorny vines, 

Its glades of reedy grass, 
Its safe and silent islands 

Within the dark morass. 

Wo to the English soldiery 

That little dread us near ! 
On them shall light at midnight 

A strange and sudden fear. 
When, waking to their tents on fire, 

Thev grasp their arms in vain. 
And they who stand to face us 

.Are beat to earth again ; 
And they who fly in terror, deem 
' .\ mighty host behind. 

And hear the tramp of thousands 

Upon the hollow wind. 



io8 SOLDIERS OF LIBERTY. 

Grave men there are by broad Santee, 

Grave men with hoary hairs ; 
Their hearts are all with Marion, 

For Marion are their prayers. 
\nd lovely ladies greet our band 

With kindliest welcoming, 
With smiles like those of summer, 

And tears like those of spring. 
For them we wear these trusty arms, 

And lay them down no more 
Till we have driven the Briton, 

For ever from our shore." 

It would indeed be but scant justice to the Soldiers of 
Liberty to omit the praise that is surely due to all such irreg- 
ular bodies of fighting men as were those who followed Marion 
and leaders like him. Even to such lawless guerrillas as were 
the much-maligned " Skinners " who ranged the shores of the 
Hudson, perpetually harassing the British outposts and forever 
at deadly feud with their Tory rivals, the " Cowboys," should 
be accorded a certain meed of praise. From among these came 
the shrewd and watchful three who, disdainino- the bribe of 
Andre, frustrated the treason of Arnold and without hope of 
reward " beyond virtue and an honest sense of duty " saved the 
patriot cause from the blackest kind of ruin. 

It was the Kentucky frontiersmen led on by George Rogers 
Clarke and John Sevier who turned the tide at the famous 
battle of King's Mountain, in South Carolina, and changed 
the whole course of the war in the southern department. 

But, while unstinted praise may be accorded to restless 
militia-man and irreo^ular fio^hter, it is to the so-called " regular 
army of the United States" in the days of revolution — known 
as the Continentals — that glory and honor most heartily 
belong. 



SOLDIERS OF LIBERTY. 109 

Never rising much above forty thousand men, falling, in 
the last years of the war, to less than twenty thousand, this 
army of the Congress was organized, equipped and kept in the 
field by the tireless energy of Washington and his supporters 
in the councils of the new-born nation. It was upon them 
chiefly that their commander depended for discipline, efficiency, 
obedience and action. In their uniform of buff and blue they 
were a goodly-appearing and sturdy set of fighters, trim when 
their coats were new, picturesque even in their rags. 

These were the men who stood ever in the gap. Though 
suffering often for the very necessities of the hard life of the 
camp, they marched even while they grumbled and fought 
their bravest even in their direst distress. Believing always in 
their great commander, spite of faction in Congress and of cabal 
amono^ their officers, thev followed him from defeat to defeat 
and from victory to victory as loyal through all the hardships 
of Valley Forge as in the feverish excitement of Monmouth 
and the final triumph at Yorktown. 

Their constancy, their valor and their devotion to the cause 
of liberty made victory possible. It was because Washington 
could depend upon this small but solid nucleus of a regular 
army to carry out his often involved plans for stratagem and 
action that he was able to wage to its final triumph the slow 
but successful war that ended in liberty. It was the stubborn 
determination of these same Continentals that, at the last, 
flung into utter failure the attempt of the British ministry to 
enslave three millions of freemen across the western seas. 

There is as much truth as poetry, as much force as fire in 
those well-known lines of Mc Master which show us the serried 
ranks of our first regular army, standing at bay, battling for the 
freedom of a people : 



SOLDIERS OF LIBERTY. 

"In their ragged regimentals 
Stood the old Continentals, 

Yielding not, 
When the Grenadiers were lunging. 
And like hail fell the plunging 

Cannon-shot ; 

When the files 

Of the isles, 
From the smoky night encampment, bore the banner of the rampant 

Unicorn, 
And grummer, grummer, grummer rolled the roll of the drummer. 

Through the morn ! 

"Then with eyes to the front all. 
And with guns horizontal, 

Stood our sires ; 
And the balls whistled deadly. 
And in streams flashing redly 
Blazed the fires ; 
As the loar 
On the shore. 
Swept the strong battle-breakers o'er the green-sodded acres 

Of the plain ; 
And louder, louder, louder, cracked the black gunpowder, 
Cracking amain ! 

"Now like smiths at their forges 
Worked the red St. George's 

Cannoniers ; 
And ' the villainous saltpetre ' 
Rang a fierce, discordant metre 
Round their ears. 
As the swift 
Storm-drift, 
With hot sweeping anger, came the horse-guards' clango- 

On our flanks. 
Then higher higher, higher, burned the old-fashioned fire 
Through the ranks ! 

'■ Then the old-fashioned Colonel 
Galloped through the white infertial 
Powder-cloud ; 



SOLDIERS OF LIBERTY. 

And his broad-sword was swinging, 
And his brazen throat was ringing 
Trumpet loud. 
Then the blue 
Bullets flew, 
And the trooper-jackets redden at the touch of the leaden 

Rifle-breath. 
And rounder, rounder, rounder, roared the iron six-pounder 
Hurling death ! " 



It is one of the unfortunate phases of sudden emancipation 
that certain self-seeking elements among the emancipated 
assert themselves all too vigorously and strive for position and 
for power. The arrogance of a brief authority made far too 
many of those who aspired to be directors or leaders selfish 
rather than statesman-like, place-hunters rather than patriots. 

It is well and wise that in the story of a nation only the 
good survives. It is better for us and for the memories of our 
forefathers that in our annals the matchless Declaration of 
Independence pushes far out of sight the mean-spirited 
'' Conway Cabal," that Bunker Hill and Saratoga and King's 
Mountain leave but scant place for the factions and the feuds, 
the spites and the frauds that so often dulled the fires of 
patriotism and tarnished the glory of our early American 
Soldiers. 

Who to-day ever thinks of the possibility of " an old Con- 
tinental " being a deserter? And yet there were renegades 
both before and after the days of Demont the Adjutant; there 
were traitors fully as criminal as Arnold the General. Who 
in the victorious America of to-day can believe that in those 
times that tried men's souls there were, amons: those hieh in 
authority in the American Army, 'men who undervalued and 
assailed the measures, the character, even the loyalty of W^ash- 



112 SOLDIERS OF LIBERTY. 

ington ? And yet these hostile elements seemed at some times 
to be almost in the majority. Not even the military ability of 
Charles Lee, that arrogant soldier of fortune whom men early 
in the Revolution styled " the Palladium of America " could 
save him from an all-consuming jealousy of the commander-in- 




\VASinXGTO.\ REVIEWING THE CONriNENTAL ARMY. 



chief and make him other than a morose comrade, a lagging aid, 
a half-hearted traitor. Nor could the hio-h rank and commanding 
station of that favorite of the Congress, General Gates, temper 
in any degree the vanity, the ambition and the venomous 
rivalries of the man who displaced Schuyler and listened to 
belittlements of Washington. To one who studies the unlovely 
characters of these and such as these even that arch-traitor 



. SOLDIERS OF LIBERTY. 113 

Benedict Arnold seems at times their superior. And indeed 
Arnold's great act of treachery should not blind us to the 
brilliant qualities of this brave and dashing American soldier. 
To him may be given much of the credit of the first attack on 
Ticonderoga, of the movement against Canada, of the night 
dash on Trenton and of the spirited engagement at Freeman's 
Farms that made possible the victory at Saratoga. Arrogant 
and impetuous though he was, angered because other and less- 
deserving officers had been placed above him in rank, harassed 
by debt, lightly regarded by Congress, importuned alike by 
tories and by Englishmen, we must remember that Benedict 
Arnold even up to the hour of his treachery possessed the 
confidence and regard of so shrewd a student of men as George 
Washington himself. In the very defects of his nature lay the 
pity of his great crime. He was utterly lacking in the patri- 
otism that can calmly brook negligence, in the virtue that can 
proudly endure injustice. 

W^ith examples like these among their superiors and 
associates it is to the everlasting honor of men like Schuyler 
and Knox and Green, of Sterling and Wayne, of Lafayette and 
" Light-Horse Harry "' Lee that with the help of that esprit de 
corps that lived in the ragged ranks of the men of Valley 
Forge they could loyally override so hateful and hostile a spirit 
as manifested itself in such contemptible conspiracies as " the 
Conway Cabal " and others of that ilk. 

And so to-day it is the valiant and true-hearted officers of 
the Revolution that we gladly recall. A noble and a gallant 
list ! Warren, unflinching patriot and valiant soldier, who 
fought and fell a volunteer at Bunker Hill ; Knox the Boston 
bookseller and dear friend of Washington, brave as a lion, " or 
any braver thing ; " Parsons the Connecticut lawyer, an adept 



114 SOLDIERS OF LIBERTY. 

in tactics, intrepid on the field ; Sterling the impetuous soldier, 
quick-witted, far-seeing and born for command ; Wooster the 
New York man of wealth and ease who spurned the offer of 
a command in the British army and used his own fortune to 
equip and pay his officers and men ; Greene, " with the possible 
exception of Washington," so says Mr. Channing, "the best offi- 
cer of high rank in the American army;"" Schuyler, painstak- 
ing, unselfish and ever-valorous, standing, says Daniel Webster, 
scarcely below Washington in the services he rendered his 
country; Lincoln, stubborn and unyielding even to the verge 
of obstinacy, but full of the patriotic fervor that no disaster could 
dampen ; Putnam, brave and valorous in the field though 
ignorant of the science of war; Henry Lee of Virginia — " Light- 
Horse Harry " — the Phil Sheridan of the Revolution ; Anthony 
Wayne, the impetuous, magnetic Pennsylvanian, called, at first, 
" Dandy Wayne " from his extreme punctiliousness as to dress, 
but in time " Mad Anthony," because of his dash, his recklessness 
and his daring ; Morgan the brilliant backwoodsman and 
George Rogers Clarke the brave young Western borderer whose 
gallantry and skill saved the vast western frontier to the 
United States. 

And how this list could be extended ! From general and 
staff officer down through all the grades of rank to the aspiring 
lieutenant and the still humbler private the names of those 
brave men who heroically faced defeat, distress and death and 
made the final triumph possible find, all, their proper place on 
the imperishable roll of patriotism. From Sergeant Jasper, 
climbing the riddled staff on Fort Moultrie and nailing at its 
peak his country's flag amid the whistling storm of British 
bullets, to plucky Jack Van Arsdale "shinning up" the crippled 
flag-staff on the battery at New York that the banner of the tri- 



SOLDIERS OF LIBERTY. 115 

umphant Colonies might float in triumph above the heads of the 
retreating British, the annals of the American Revolution are 
replete with heroism. It was Sergeant Ezra Lee of Connecticut 
who, moving stealthily among the war-ships of England, tried 
with his clumsy infernal machine to blow up the British fleet. 
It was William Barton the young Providence captain who 
boldly pushed into the enemy's lines and actually kidnaped 
the invading commander, the British General Prescott. It 
was the boatmen of Arnold the traitor who havino-, all un- 
suspecting, rowed him to the Vulture man-of-war stoutly re- 
fused his bribes and threats to induce them to desert. It 
was the mutinous soldiers of the Pennsylvania regiments who, 
when on the march to Princeton to force from Cono-ress redress 
for unendurable negligence, angrily spurned the offers of Sir 
Henry Clinton to buy them to his side and hung his messen- 
gers as spies. It was the garrison of two that held the fort 
at Vincennes against eight hundred British troops and after 
the surrender marched proudly out with all the honors of war. 
It would be but partial justice to American blood to fail 
to remember that in the seven years' contest for freedom there 
was another side. There were Americans who fouo-ht for 
freedom ; there were Americans who remained loyal to their 
acknowledged king. It was these latter — Royalist, Loyalist, 
or Tory, call them what we will — who through impulse, inter- 
est or a mistaken sense of loyalty remained faithful to the 
crown of England. During the long contest waged by the 
revolutionists of America it is claimed that fully thirty thou- 
sand provincials entered the British army and fought against 
their brothers, their neighbors and their former friends. The 
striking uniform of green in which these battalions of " Loyal 
Americans " were first clothed gave place before the war was 



ii6 SOLDIERS OF LIBERTY. 

over to the brilliant scarlet that was the badge of British 
discipline. But all the same whether in green or in scarlet 
these thirty thousand followers of the banner of the king were 
American Soldiers. 

For fully a century the name of " Tory " has, in America, been 
the synonym of all that is base in treachery, false in friendship 
and cruel in war. While the old feuds rankled in the families 
whose heads had taken different ways in that terrible strife, 
while personal quarrels intensified political differences this in- 
justice toward those of opposing views was perhaps unavoid- 
able. But the years that leave those, hot days of faction 
further and further in the background should bring to us who 
look back upon them calmness, candor and dispassionate 
judgment. If these are to be employed in the study of the 
past we must accord to the long-despised Tories of the Revolu- 
tion valor, integrity and renown. They wagered their all on 
their opinions. They fought and they lost. And we, looking 
at the result from their stand-point, can surely say with them 

"For Loyalty is still the same 
Wliether it win or lose the game." 

All over the continent, so we have the assurance of his- 
torians and observers, the " loyal" provincial regiments proved 
on many a stubborn field their worthiness to stand in line 
with the veterans of the British army. Sir John Johnson, Tory 
though he was, showed himself yet more merciful than did the 
" peacock patriots " of Schuyler and the five thousand nien 
of Sullivan, from whose raid on the Six Nations, in 1779, dates, 
so it is asserted, " the inextino-uishable hatred of the red-skins 
to the United States." 

As this struggle between freedom and tyranny was pro- 



Ii 



SOLDIERS OF LIBERTY. 119 

longed, the armies of that same "tyranny" received constant 
support from local volunteers. In 1779 New York gave 
Knyphausen six thousand good troops from among her citizens. 
The " Gentleman Volunteers " of Boston were commanded by 
Timothy Ruggles, declared even by his foes to be the best 
soldier in the colonies. With Clinton in New York in 1782 
were over two thousand Loyalists — all battle-scarred veterans. 
When Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown he had with him 
detachments from various regiments of American Loyalists 
whom continued service and hard fighting had converted into 
the very best fighting material. 

The Pennsylvania Loyalists and the Queen's Rangers of 
Philadelphia did efificient service for Great Britain. The Loyal 
Light Horse of Colonel James de Lancey successfully with- 
stood the combined assault of Washington and his French 
allies. The New York Loyal Volunteers decided by their 
valor the bloody battle of Eutaw Springs. And these same 
Tories from Manhattan, after taking part in many a well-fought 
contest were one of the last reo-iments in the British service to 
relinquish their hold on American soil. 

The Americans who did not rebel may have been mistaken. 
Certainly, when the end came, they suffered for their loyalty 
and lost in exile and poverty the stake they had wagered on 
their honestly-held opinions. But let us be just. Honor can 
surely be given where honor is rightly due. Even in such a 
strife as was this, where brother shot down brother and friend 
worked vengeance upon friend, we who now look calmly over 
those frightful battle-grounds can speak, with pride in their 
valor as soldiers even while we regret the mistake that swayed 
their judgment and decided their choice, the names of those 
whom our ancestors condemned as "' detested tories " — Drum- 



120 SOLDIERS OF LIBERTY. 

mond of New York, Delancy " the outlaw of the Bronx," Sir 
John Johnson the feudal lord of the valley of the Mohawk, 
Ruggles of Massachusetts, De Peyster, the hero of King's 
Mountain, whose New York " Tories " seven times repelled the 
furious charge of the " rebels," Thomas and Hovenden and 
James, whose provincials and refugees were invaluable as light 
troops while the British lay at Philadelphia — these and many 
more who might be added prove that even in the tory ranks we 
have so long been taught to despise there lived the valor, the 
bravery and the self-sacrifice that have ever been the peculiar 
pride of the American Soldier. 

The smoke of conflict died away when at Yorktown the 
charge on the British redoubt led by Hamilton and Lafayette 
showed to Cornwallis the absolute impracticability of longer 
continuing his defense. The allied troops of America and 
France — republicanism and absolutism fighting side by side 
— made the United States a nation. 

The seven years of war were ended. A strife that had been 
of slow but certain growth ever since the days when the first 
colonists from across the sea set foot on the wild shores of the 
New World had come to its logical conclusion and a nation of 
freemen was born. On many a stubborn field, in many a 
bloody fight the sturdy arm and the valiant heart had proved 
the moral strength that lay behind them. The first endeavors 
of the real American Soldier had brought from dependence in- 
dependence and through patriotism freedom. Henceforth the 
troops of America were to be the Army of the People. 



CHAPTER VI. 



THE TROOPS OF DISCONTENT. 




N a certain memorable October morninor in 
the year 1781 a British drummer boy 
cHmbed to the parapet of an English 
redoubt at Yorktown. There, vigorously 
plying his drumsticks, he sounded the parley. 
Hostilities ceased. Two days afterward, at 
two o'clock in the afternoon of the nineteenth 
of October, the British troops marched out of 
their works, with colors cased and the soldiers 
of King George laid down their arms in sur- 
render. 

Appropriately enough their drums rattled 
out the quickstep " The World turned Upside Down." The 
world was indeed turned upside down so far as all the tradi- 
tions of power were concerned, for, with that surrender at 
Yorktown, the American Revolution practically came to an 
end. Tyranny acknowledged itself defeated and a "parcel of 
rebels" became a nation of freemen. 

But, though the war closed with the surrender of Cornwallis, 
not for two full years did the troops of England finally leave 
the land they had so confidently come to conquer. On the 
twenty-fifth of November, 1783, Sir Guy Carleton evacuated the 



122 THE TROOrS OF DISCONTENT. 

city of New York. As the British rear guard pushed off from 
the Battery the advance guard of the Americans — a troop of 
horse, a regiment of infantry and a company of artillery — 
filed into the deserted fort. Through the streets of the city 
that for fully seven years had lain in possession of the soldiers 
of the English king, sounded the joyful roll of the drums. 
Escorted by Captain Delavan's " West Chester Light Horse," 
Washington marched into the city with a veteran following of 
the Continental troops and the last vestige of England's 
authority in her former colonies disappeared forever. 

But before that day of evacuation and possession arrived the 
army of the United States had practically been disbanded. 
When it became evident that no further hostility on the part of 
England was to be feared the greater portion of the Continental 
troops was dismissed upon long or indefinite furloughs. On 
the nineteenth of April, 1783, just eight 3'ears to a day from the 
time of the historic conflict at Lexington, a cessation of hostil- 
ities was publicly announced to the American army, and on the 
eighteenth of October in the same year that army was, by 
proclamation of the Congress, officially disbanded. This final 
act took effect on the second of November followino: and when, 
on the twenty-fifth of the month, the city of New York was 
evacuated by the British troops only a small body of veteran 
soldiers under the command of General Knox represented the 
American army. 

Peace brought respite from war, but it by no means brought 
satisfaction to those by whom it had been secured. The inspir- 
ation of victory is haloed all about with exultation and excite- 
ment. The after-happenings of victory are sometimes singularly 
lacking in enthusiasm. Patriotism is broad and self-sacrificing, 
but even patriotism needs to be kept alive b)^ such homely 



THE TROOPS OF DISCONTENT. 



123 



necessities as bread and butter. The laborer is worthy of his 
hire ; and when long-promised wages were not forthcoming even 
the Soldiers of Liberty began to grumble. 

The Congress of the United States' at a cost of one hundred 
and forty millions of dollars had wao-ed the war of revolu- 




PEACE BV NO MEANS liROUGUT SATISFACTlUN. 

tion to a successful termination. But the cost of this war, 
small as it may appear in these days of vast expenditures, had 
loaded the States with a burden of debt greater than they 
seemed willing or able to carry. The Congress, straining every 
nerve to force out its plans to success and keep its armies in 



124 THE TROOPS OF DISCONTENT. 

the field, was scarcely able to meet even the bare necessities of 
war and when Cornwallis laid down his arms at Yorktown the 
United States of America found themselves largely in arrears 
to the very men by whose valor their existence had been ren- 
dered possible. 

The two years that intervened between the surrender at 
Yorktown and the evacuation of New York were full of discon- 
tent and orrumblins:. Brave men who had sacrificed so much 
for the cause they had enlisted to defend felt that the people in 
whose interests they had fought should at least pay to them the 
wages that were their due. But even justice seemed to halt. 
There were exasperating delays on the part of Congress, punct- 
uated only by unfulfilled promises; there was discontent. on the 
part of the army interspersed with frequent mutterings that 
threatened to break into absolute rebellion. And so the months 
went slowly by. 

With doubts, not only as to the ability but as to the grati- 
tude, even, of the American people the army that had made 
them a people disbanded. Already in this very year of 1783 
the orrowino^ discontent amons: the soldiers had threatened 
to develop into serious action. The half-rebellious Newburg 
address which voiced this discontent of the veteran fighters 
had in it, looked at from their standpoint, a certain amount of 
justice and excuse. But the very circulation of such an address 
argued a condition approaching to mutiny; and even injustice 
is no excuse for insubordination. Washington was not the sort 
of man to tolerate insurrection. He speedily frowned down an 
attempt which had the approval even of certain of his col- 
leagues and, by his wisdom, his tact and his firmness, prevented 
a movement on the part of the army which, if carried out, 
would have made the Soldiers of Liberty but little better than 



THE TROOPS OF DISCONTENT. 125 

those military dictators of old — the Praetorian Guards of the 
soldier-made Caesars of Rome. The Lancaster revolt of the 
same year which actually did drive Congress in terror from 
its chambers and well-nigh upset the government itself was 
another mistaken act on the part of the discontented soldiers. 

These mutterings of discontent ran through several years 
and were only finally settled by the issue of Continental certifi- 
cates for the payment of the soldiers' claims. These paper 
promises to pay, however, were not money. Their value was 
almost fictitious, and many a poor soldier who had fought for 
the liberty of the land, when pressed for the very necessities of 
life, was forced to dispose of these Continental certificates at a 
ruinous sacrifice — sometimes as low as one sixth of their value. 

But the war was over and the army was disbanded. In June, 
1784, eighty men represented all that remained of the army 
of the Congress. Of this number twenty-five were detailed for 
service at Fort Pitt on the Ohio frontier and fifty-five guarded 
the almost useless munitions of war at West Point. Sturdy 
old General Lincoln, the Secretary of War, found himself with 
no army to direct and retired to private life. 

And yet it was evident that soldiers were a necessity. The 
undefended frontier on the north and west demanded attention. 
Congress, however, had no power to maintain a standing army 
in time of peace and when a motion was made to create such 
an army, even though limited to a few hundred men, so loud 
was the cry against it by those who deemed it a menace to the 
liberties of the people that, as a compromise, the several States 
were invited by Congress to raise their own armies for their own 
defense. Action was taken on this sugjs^estion, and on the 
third of June, 1784, an ordinance was passed recommending to 
the States of Connecticut, New York, New Jersey and Penn- 



126 THE TROOPS OF DISCONTENT 

sylvania that they raise between them a force of seven hundred 
men to garrison their frontiers for one year. 

When, finally, the Constitution of the United States became 
the law of the land there existed, in the year 1788, a United 
States army of the magnificent proportions of five hundred and 
ninety-five men and two companies of artillery numbering 
seventy-one non-commissioned officers and privates. These sol- 
diers of the union were distributed among the few military posts 
kept up by Congress. A small number were stationed at West 
Point; the remainder were on duty at certain of the stockaded 
forts in the Western country. 

The early years of the new nation were years of disturbance 
and discontent. People scarcely knew what was to be the 
character of the g-overnment under which thev were to live. 
Until the adoption of the Constitution the several States were 
leagued together only by a half-way sort of mutual consent that 
w^as as brittle and uncertain a bond as would be a rope of sand. 
Even within the States themselves the law-makers of each com- 
monwealth found themselves at variance with the very people 
they were elected to represent. Discontent not unfrequently 
flamed out into real rebellion, mobs and riots were of common 
occurrence and those who had stood in the ranks of liberty 
were often all too ready to side with the malcontents and fight 
against the very authority they had helped to create. 

Disturbances growing out of the question of the rightful 
ownership and occupation of land often developed into actual 
bloodshed and those who had fought side by side on the battle- 
fields of the Revolution found themselves facing each other, 
hot and angry, in the strife for possession. One qf these inter- 
state disturbances was the attempt by Pennsylvania in 1 784 to 
oust from its hill country about the Wyoming certain families 



THE TROOPS OF DISCONTENT. 127 

from the East who had settled there under the disputed Con- 
necticut grants. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania fancy- 
ing its rights invaded by the coming of these " Yankee " 
settlers sent detachments from their State army to drive 
away these old-time " boomers." Coming upon the settlers when 
floods and fearful weather had well-nigh disheartened them, the 
Pennsylvania militia, led first by the mean-spirited lawyer 
Patterson and next by the stern old soldier Armstrong, harried 
the settlers with fire and with sword and dealt with them as 
ruthlessly and almost as brutally as had the Tories of Butler and 
the Indians of Brant in that historic foray that has made the 
massacre of Wyoming one of the saddest pictures in the Revo- 
lutionary story. But brutality found its Nemesis. Among the 
settlers were men who knew what it meant to fight; and fight 
they did. At last even the laws of the State stepped in to put 
a stop to the brutality of Patterson and the treachery of Arm- 
strong, and when these two leaders attempted to resist the 
authority of the State, they fell before the righteous though 
eleventh-hour indignation of an awakened people. 

It was in the line of similar protests against authority and 
law that the " military operations " of the troops of discontent 
were conducted during the years that succeeded the close of 
the Revolution. Uncertain as to their corporate standing, 
slowly feeling their way toward a solid footing among the 
nations of the earth, the people of the newly-united States 
made many mistakes of judgment, many lapses into faction. 

Quick to criticise and all too ready to coin their objections 
into threats those among the masses who felt themselves un- 
justly treated by the acts of their own law-makers — "the 
servants of the people" — were quickly roused to rebel against 
the constituted authority and to dictate where they should 



128 THE TROOPS OF DISCONTENT. 

submit. It took long years of harsh experience for the people 
of the United States to yield unquestionably to the will of the 
majority. 

Out of such unsettled conditions and from such popular 
protests came much trouble and no little use for the fast- 
rustino; muskets of the Revolution. One of the earliest, as one 
of the most serious of these disturbances was that known as 
Shays' Rebellion. 

This celebrated rising grew out of questions as to the 
proprietorship of land, out of the pressure of the hard times, 
the unwise exactions of those who held claims for money due, 
the weaknesses of certain laws enacted and especially the 
attempt, in Massachusetts, to levy State and federal taxes. 

In the " ranks of the poor " were many who had been 
soldiers in the Continental Army. The revolt drew to its sup- 
port numbers of people in Western Massachusetts, in New 
Hampshire, Vermont, and even in Eastern New York. The 
leader was Captain Daniel Shays. He was a man who had 
seen service in the Revolution and the malcontents who put 
themselves under his command were speedily drilled into some 
semblance of military discipline. But an armed mob is much 
like a pirate crew. Both are outlaws and all attempts at 
discipline or authority are rated only at second-hand. Leader- 
ship is an uncertain quantity. Number One is always the main 
consideration. So, when the army of Massachusetts, forty-four 
hundred strong and marshaled by stout old General Lincoln, 
put itself in motion and actually faced the malcontents in 
fight the mutinous spirit speedily yielded to the organized 
forces of Law. There was much threatening^ and bluster, 
no little show of resistance, and some fighting, even ; but 
the determination of Lincoln and his militia carried the day 



THE TROOPS OF DISCONTENT 



129 



and saved not alone the State of Massachusetts but the entire 
confederation of States from what might have been a disas- 
trous and suicidal popular sentiment. 

It is in dealing with the troops of discontent that real dis- 
cipline best exhibits itself. To be stern and unyielding when 
occasion demands, to be lenient and forgiving when superiority 
is once established — this is the only course that wins in all 
encounters with mobs. 

When Shays at the head of two thousand men marched 
upon the arsenal at Springfield the commandant, General 




"NO FEES, NO EXECUTIONS, NO SHEKII-k!" 



Shepard, thinking to frighten the invaders ordered his men to 
fire in the air. But the rebel ranks contained too many old 
soldiers who had smelled powder on real battle-fields and 
Shepard only recovered from his mistake by an actual and dis- 
astrous volley. When General Cobb, an old Revolutionary 
officer, was menaced by the rioters at Taunton where he was 
holding court as judge he faced them without an instant's delay 



I30 THE TROOPS OF DISCONTENT. 

and bade them disperse. " Sirs," he said, " you cannot frighten 
me. I shall either sit here as a judge or die here as a general." 
" I do not care a rap for your bayonets," shouted that sturdy 
Revolutionary veteran, Artemas Ward, a judge of Massachusetts 
but an old soldier as well, when the guards of the rioters barred 
his way into the court-house at Worcester ; " run 'em through 
me if you dare ! I am here to do my duty and I'll do it if I 
die for it." Firmness in emergencies is almost certain to win 
and firmness was a quality eminently possessed by the old 
soldiers of the Revolution. 

" No fees, no executions, no sheriff ! " was the demand of the 
rioters at a later day around this same court-house at Worcester. 
The sheriff, plucky Colonel Greenleaf, looked undismayed upon 
the triple line of bayonets levelled to bar his progress. " All 
right," he replied calmlv ; "if you think the fees for executions 
are too high — why, I'll hang you all for nothing and high 
enough to suit you too." " ' Burgoyne ' Lincoln and his army," 
was the cry of the rebels in Western Massachusetts when they 
heard of the military advance against them. But Lincoln and 
his army were not to be " Burgoyned." The rising of the peo- 
ple to oppose the march of the invading British General whose 
defeat at Saratoga gave victory to Revolution was not to be 
repeated when the invaders and the people were of the same 
kin. Lincoln's spirited march through winter snows showed 
that this old campaigner, this valiant secretary of war in the Rev- 
olutionary days was not to be trifled with and rebellion finally 
yielded to law. Defeated and dispirited the Troops of Discon= 
tent lay down their arms at the feet of Authority, the rebellion 
broke into pieces and the danger that was so widely feared was 
at last averted. 

This anti-tax rebellion in the North found its counterpart in 



THE TROOPS OF DISCONTENT. 131 

an anti-tax uprising in the South. The protest of the people of 
Penns3/lvania and Maryland, in 1794, against the federal tax 
upon spirit distilled within the United States again awoke the 
troops of discontent who provoked that dramatic episode in 
American history known as the " Whiskey Insurrection." 
Seven thousand men marshaled by Bradford the " commander- 
in-chief " of the revolt pledged themselves to resist to the 
last the collection of the objectionable tax and speedily laid 
the whole region within the shadow of the Alleghanies under 
the terror of mob rule and military despotism. " The whole 
western country," says Mr. McMaster, " began in the language 
of that time, to bristle with anarchy-poles. From some floated 
red flags bearing the name of the rebellious counties. On 
others were the words ' Liberty or Death,' or ' Liberty and 
Equality,' or ' No Excise.'" 

But the government acted quickly. President Washington 
made a requisition on the governors of Maryland, Virginia, 
Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and fifteen thousand men under 
the command of " Light Horse Harry "Lee — a fighter of the 
old wars — marched against the malcontents. The battle-cry 
of the rebels was " Liberty and no Excise." But Liberty to 
them meant License. " No Excise " meant the free distillation 
of whiskey. As the troops advanced, the discontented elements 
fled before Light Horse Harry's men. They could make no 
stand against organized opposition. 

The rising was speedily quelled. It was a bloodless rebellion 
indeed and though of sufficient force to seem at one time to 
threaten the very existence of the Union the strength of the 
military force gathered for its overthrow was so irresistible 
that danger was averted and once again the Troops of Dis- 
content dispersed at the advance of Authority. 



132 THE TROOPS OF DISCONTENT 

In one way or another, though less serious than were the 
disturbances ah"eady cited, did the chafing of the people of 
the new nation under unfamiliar and untried laws display 
itself in resistance and revolt. It is unpleasant to note that 
the conduct of the soldiers enlisted to quell these insurrections 
seems to have been open to criticism. Militar}^ power, when 
unchecked, frequently becomes tyranny. The brutalities of 
Armstrong's troops in the Wyoming trouble of 1784 appear 
to have found its counterpart in the outrages by the militia of 
the same Quaker State of Pennsylvania during the short-lived 
troubles of 1799, known as Fries' Rebellion. These instances 
of over-zeal, however, were to be expected in so crude and unor- 
ganized a body of troops as was the citizen soldiery of the 
United States in the last days of the eighteenth century. 

But this crudeness, so prone to display itself in offensive 
measures upon unresisting women and children, was compelled 
to stand a test of quite another sort when brought into battle 
against the red warriors of the frontier. 

The Indians of the west resisted with reasonable justice the 
encroachments of the settlers who were crowdino; into their 
lands beyond the Ohio, Remonstrance and appeal meeting 
with no attention or resulting only in a contemptuous continu- 
ance of occupation, the red-men resorted to their final arguments 
— the torch, the rifle and the tomahawk. "No white man 
shall plant corn in Ohio." This was the Indian fiat. " That 
the threat was not an empty one," says Mr. Black, " soon 
became apparent. The planter fell in his tracks. The crops 
were burned and mangled by unseen hands. Death lurked on 
the Kentucky frontier. There must be war." 

The settlers demanded protection. The government re- 
sponded to their appeal, and in September, 1790, General Josiah 



THE TROOPS OF DISCONTENT 



^il 



Harmar with an army of fourteen hundred and fifty men was 
sent into the Ohio country to " discipHne " the Indians. But, 
alas, the boot was found to be quite upon the other foot ! 

"Never before," says Mr. McMaster, "had such a collec- 
tion of men been dignified with the name of army." The troops 
were without discipline, intelligence or decent equipment. The 
officers were jealous, incompetent and ignorant of military 
rules. As was to be expected, this collection of " racraed reo-i- 
ments " proved no match for 
the wary and warlike Indians. 
The expedition ended, as 
might have been conjectured, 
in defeat and disgrace, and 
the remnant of his army, says 
Mr. Black, " which Harmar 
led back to Cincinnati had 
the unsubdued savao-es al- 
most continually at their 
heels." 

A second expedition au- 
thorized by the President was sent against the Ohio Indians 
in the autumn of the next year. It mustered two thousand 
three hundred regulars and six hundred militia and was under 
the command of General Arthur St. Clair the governor of 
the Northwest Territory and a prominent officer of the Revolu- 
tion. This second army met with an even more disastrous 
defeat than did the troops of Harmar. 

Torn with official jealousies, weak in discipline and detail, 
shamefully supplied with useless equipments by unfaithful 
government agents, shaking wdth chills and fever, hungry, tired, 
sick, and altogether heedless as to their surroundings, St. Clair's 




134 THE TROOPS OF DISCONTENT. 

army was on the third of November, 1791, surrounded, am- 
bushed and attacked by a host of Indians led on by Brant the 
half-breed " hero of Wyoming " and utterly and terribly 
defeated. 

Twice outgeneraled and twice so utterly routed! It was a 
bad record for the American soldier — a fighter who had proved 
his valor on many a bloody field. But American pluck, without 
a final struggle, would not leave the Western country to the 
victorious Indians. 

A fresh force was at once enlisted. Five thousand men 
made up this new army of the West. During the winter of 
1791-92 these fresh troops were, according to the direction of 
President Washington, " trained and disciplined " for the 
especial service they had entered upon. " Do not spare powder 
and lead," wrote Washington, "so the men be made marksmen." 

The result was an army altogether different from those of 
Harmar and St. Clair. This army of invasion was rather 
pompously styled the Legion of the United States. It was 
•especially trained to meet the exigencies of Indian warfare and 
■was divided not into brigades and regiments but into four sub- 
legions provided with legionary and sub-legionary ofHcers. 

The command was given to one of the most popular of the 
Revolutionary heroes. General Anthony Wayne, the conqueror 
of Stony Point. " A' better ofiBcer," says McMaster, "could not 
have been found." A born soldier, one whose boyhood had 
been passed in constructing mud-forts and teaching his com- 
rades how to storm redoubts, this gallant Pennsylvanian had 
fouoht with valor througrh the Revolution, had been decorated 
by Congress for his bravery and enthusiastically nicknamed 
by his soldiers and the people " Mad Anthony Wayne." 

He assumed the command determined to win. And he 



THE TROOPS OF DISCONTENT. 137 

did win. With an army made efficient through careful drill, 
through discipline, appropriate equipment and all the requisites 
that its unfortunate predecessors had lacked the " Legion of 
the United States " marched into the Ohio country, made a 
vigorous attack upon the Indians and their Canadian allies 
and in the bloody battle of the Maumee fought on the 
twentieth of August, 1794, with all the valor of Monmouth 
and all the dash of Stony Point, utterly routed and scattered 
the Indian foeman. "Such was the impetuosity of the charge, 
by the first line of infantry," so runs General Wayne's report, 
"that the Indian and Canadian militia and volunteers were 
driven from their coverts in so short a time that but a part 
of the legion could get up in season to participate in the 
action." 

Almost as ferocious and still more famous because it made 
the record of a brave American soldier and a popular American 
president was the battle of Tippecanoe. This celebrated Indian 
engagement was fought within the limits of the Illinois country 
in the year 181 1. Uniting for the annihilation of the white 
man, under their politic and patriotic chieftain Tecumthe, 
the Indians of the northwest confederated for white destruction, 
burst upon the little army of General Harrison in the dark 
of the early morning of the seventh of November, 181 1. It 
was an unwise move for the red-man and was brought about, 
not by the genius of Tecumthe, but l^y the influence of his 
uncanny-looking kinsman " The Prophet." Harrison's nine 
hundred men sturdily stood their ground. The battle was 
long and bloody, the loss in officers was especially noticeable, 
but the Indians were defeated and Tecumthe's carefully-laid 
plan for an Iiijdian confederacy was forever overthrown. 

In all tlie hostile encounters succeeding the Revolution 



138 THE TROOPS OF DISCONTENT. 

there was, indeed, much that must astonish and annoy the 
patriotic student of American character who cannot precisely 
square the cowardice and unruliness, the crudeness and the 
lack of discipline with the standing of Revolutionary veterans 
and the traditions of American valor. But, even while admit- 
ting the existence of these negative qualities, there must be 
found in the story of those immature days much that can 
brighten an uninteresting record and illumine an often-clouded 
picture. 

There was, as we have seen, alike pluck and courage in 
the days of discontent. And, even in Harmar's undisciplined 
foray, the skill and daring of such true-hearted soldiers as 
Major Fontaine of the Regulars shed a certain glory over the 
gloom of defeat. The spirited bayonet charge of Colonel 
Darke, roused to fury at the fall of his son, almost retrieved 
the disasters of St. Clair. The pluck and valor of Anthony 
Wayne's nine hundred, who at the Maumee Rapids routed a 
British and Indian force of more than twice their number, were 
emphatically displayed in deeds of personal prowess that were 
inspired by the bravery and bearing of the intrepid commander. 

" In what lisht, sir," demanded the British commandant. 
Major Campbell, " am I to view such near approaches of an 
American army almost within reach of the guns of a post 
belonging to His Majesty the King of Great Britain } " 

" The muzzles of my small arms, sir, in yesterday's fight 
gave the most full and most satisfactory answer to your ques- 
tion," Wayne defiantly replied. " Had the action continued 
until the Indians were driven to the protection of the post you 
mention even the guns of that post would not have impeded 
the progress of the victorious army under my command." 

On the field of Tippecanoe — that bloody battle in the dark 



THE TROOrS OF DISCONTENT. 



^39 



— the vigilance and valor of General Harrison brought to his 
name a lasting renown and inspired the men who won that 
historic victory; for Tippecanoe, though a triumph dearly 
bought, was far-reaching in its results. 

"Where is the captain of this company ?" the general 
demanded as, peering through the gloom he saw on the high 
ground where the prairies meet a little body of men gallantly 
holding their own. " Dead, sir," said the young Ensign Tipton. 
" Where are the lieutenants ? " " Dead." " Where is the 
ensign } " " I am here." " Stand fast, my 
brave fellow," said the general with a look 
of approval at the gallant little band and 
its no less gallant leader; "one moment 
longer and I will relieve you." The relief 
came and the victory of Tippecanoe was 
assured. 

For any lack of valor, of discipline or 
of martial moods in the days of conflict 
that make up the story of the Troops of 
Discontent and the Soldiers of Immaturity we must look for 
the cause to the very composition and methods of the Americans 
themselves. 

The Revolution was over. A land, wasted by seven years 
of war, demanded immediate attention or the work of years of 
preparation would be lost. Beyond the battle-scarred land lay 
the wildernesses of the vaster West. They were full of 
promisQ, fertile of hope, and called for men to conquer, to settle 
and to develop them. 

To all such home-builders further strife was repugnant. 
The political sky, too, was so clouded, so full of warring ele- 
ments, so dark with uncertainties that, to the majority of the 




ANTHONY WAYNE. 



I40 THE TROOPS OF DISCONTENT. 

people, the army was an unpleasant and unprofitable national 
incubus, the life of the soldier was deemed as but the last resort 
of the shiftless, the drone or the outcast. 

And yet, notwithstanding the popular objections to a stand- 
ino- army, Conoress mana2:ed to have under its control, even 
from the very adoption of the Constitution, at least the shadow 
of such an army. 

The War Department of the United States was organized 
on the seventh of August, 1789, with General Knox as the first 
Secretary of War. He found a standing force of six hundred 
and seventy-two available men as the " bulwark " of the new 
nation — a weak enouQ:h bulwark for so undefended a land! 
From the date of the organization of the Department to the 
War of 181 2 the Secretaries of War were, respectively: Henry 
Knox, Timothy Pickering, James Mc Henry, Samuel Dexter, 
Roger Griswold, Henry Dearborn and William Eustis. Of 
these, all except Dexter were veterans of the Revolution, but 
the incoherencies, the frail finances and, above all, the national 
animosity to a standing army gave our first Secretaries little in 
the way of material and much in the way of worry. 

As Indian wars and international disputes warranted an 
increasing force the troops of the United States grew from the 
paltry seven hundred of 1789 to somewhat more respectable 
proportions. In 1792 this force was increased to 5120 men, in 
1794 it fell to 3629; it rose to 5144 in 1804, dropped to 3278 in 
1807, and, in 18 10, footed up 7154. Between these years, too, 
its generals-in-chief were of an equally shifting character. 
Washington was succeeded by Knox in 1783, Knox by Harmar 
in 1788, Harmar by St. Clair in 1791, St. Clair by Wayne in 
1792, Wayne by Wilkinson in 1796, Wilkinson by Washington 
in 1798 and Washington again by Wilkinson in 1800. 



THE TROOPS OF DISCONTENT. 141 

Washington's term as Lieutenant-General began on the third 
of July, 1798, just twenty-two years to a day after his assuming 
command of the Revolutionary troops on the commons of 
Cambridge. It was his last service to the American people and 
was the result of the popular war-wave that swept the land 
when, in 1798, the insults of" France, steeped in the fanatical 
fury of a righteous revolution unrighteously upheld, almost 
drove the former allies into war. 

Throughout the States the black cockade was the symbol 
of patriotism ; the old fervor of the fighting days returned and 
the doggerel of the time, sung and whistled in every town, gave 
the key note of determination : 

" Americans then flv to arms, 

And learn the way to use 'em ; 
If each man fight to 'fend his rights 

The French can't long abuse 'em." 

The war fever grew. Line-of-battle ships sprang from 
hastil3'-laid stocks. Along the Atlantic coast forts were traced 
out, built or strengthened. Volunteers rushed to the militia 
recruiting offices and, as the citizen soldiers of America pledged 
themselves anew to the defense of the land they loved, they 
shouted huzza ! and yet again huzza ! to the most popular of all 
the toasts and sentiments of the day : " Millions for defense but 
not one cent for tribute ! " 

But neither defense nor tribute became necessary. Napo- 
leon the Shrewd as well as the Great, recognized the unwisdom 
of making another foe in the " nation of debaters " across the 
western sea. France recalled her hasty words and stopped 
her hostile ways. The allies of old became friends once more 
and the army of the United States was reduced to a peace foot- 



142 THE TROOPS OF DISCONTENT. 

ing. The militia regiments dwindled away; muster days lost 
their dramatic expectancies and not until 1812, when the old 
antagonist, Britain, sought to force brutality into battle and 
contempt into conflict was there need or call for the active 
services of the American Soldier. 

And as the century died there died with it the great soldier 
who had by his wisdom, his strategy and his indomitable will 
led the way along which the thirteen colonies marched into free- 
dom. In 1 799 Washington died — the leading historic figure 
of the eighteenth century, the soldier who first in war was also 
the statesman first in peace and has ever since been the ideal 
patriot, first in the hearts of his countrymen. 



CHAPTER VII. 









A LEADERLESS WAR, 

^^HERE stood, in the year 1812, in 
that far Northwest where the 
1)^ waters of three great inland seas 
unite for their onward course to 
the distant ocean, a soHtary out- 
post garrisoned by the soldiers 
of the United States — the fort 
on Mackinaw. A small but im- 
portant post, the country that it 
defended had been for generations 
the scene of contest. Here French and Indians, here English 
and French, here Americans and Englishmen had warred for 
the possession of the western water-ways into Lakes Michigan 
and Superior. Finally delivered up by the British in 1 795 it 
was, in this month of July, 1812, held by a little garrison of 
fifty-seven American soldiers under command of Lieutenant 
Hanks. 

Remote from civilization, surrounded only by the waters 
and forests of the vast Northwest, this slender band of defenders 
heard but little from the world without and still less from their 
official superiors — the dilatory War Department at Washington. 
Forty miles to the northeast, upon St. Joseph's Island in the 

143 



144 A LEADERLESS WAR. 

Sault St. Marie, stood the nearest English post, garrisoned by 
a small detachment of British regulars under command of 
Captain Roberts. 

On the morning of the seventeenth of July, 1812, Lieuten- 
ant Hanks, looking out from his quarters, was surprised to see 
no signs of life in the little fur-trading settlement that had 
sprung up below the American post. Sending out to ascertain 
the cause he was astounded to learn that, during the preceding 
night, a force of more than a thousand men — British, Cana- 
dians and Indians — had been led from the British fort above 
against the American post. But still more astounded was he 
when he learned that war had actually been declared between 
Great Britain and the United States, and that a British oiificer 
waited below, flag in hand, as a messenger from Captain Roberts, 
demanding the surrender of Fort Mackinaw. 

Resistance was impossible. Dazed, overawed and entirely 
unprepared for defense Lieutenant Hanks had no alternative 
but to surrender. With a negligence that was as stupid as it 
was unpardonable the War Department at Washington delayed 
sending to the posts on the Western frontier any notification of 
the declaration of war. The British authorities had been quick 
to act. And thus it came to pass that an important military 
post among the great lakes fell without a blow to the alert and 
better-informed soldiers of EnHand. 

This disaster at Mackinaw was but an index to the conduct 
of what is known in the history of America as the War of 18 12. 
Negligence, delay, " a miserly economy " and an utter lack of 
trained troops impeded the American operations from the very 
outset. Forts were surrendered, important posts abandoned, 
battles lost and plans of invasion disastrously brought to naught 
by the utter lack of competent leaders and the timid and 



A LEADERLESS WAR. 145 

wavering ways of those in authority at Washington. " History," 
says Mr. Roosevelt, " has not yet done justice to the ludicrous 
and painful folly and stupidity of which the government founded 
by Jefferson and carried on by Madison was guilty, both in its 
preparation for and in its way of carrying on this war; nor is it 
yet realized that the men just mentioned and their associates 
are primarily responsible for the loss we suffered in it and the 
bitter humiliation some of its incidents caused us." 

It has for years been with too many Americans the fashion 
to speak of the War of 18 12 as a successful resistance of the 
arms of England by the army and navy of the United States. 
Of the navy this may have been true ; but so far as the army 
was concerned its part in the second war with England was 
very far froni being a glorious round of successes. This, a 
study of the records will only too plainly show. The land 
operations of the War of 18 12 are, as one writer has declared, 
" neither cheerful reading for an American nor interesting to 
a military student." Almost the only bright spot in the long 
catalogue of disaster was the dramatic battle of New Orleans, 
won by a general who, up to that time, had scarcely been 
esteemed a leader and fought after peace had been declared — 
a needless battle and a useless victory. 

Self-inspection is one of the best remedies for a tendency 
to boasting and vainglory. Let us hastily glance at the facts. 
Quickly following the fall of Fort Mackinaw came the failure 
of Hull's campaign on the Michigan frontier, the defeat of Van 
Home by Tecumthe and his Indians, the cruel massacre at 
Fort Dearborn, now Chicago, and the cowardly surrender of 
Detroit. The invasion of Canada by Van Rensselaer ended 
with the defeat of the Americans at Oueenstown and the 
astounding refusal of the American militia-men to cross to the 



146 A LEADERLESS WAR. 

succor of their countrymen. The failure of the ridiculous and 
vaporizing Smythe in a second invasion of Canada was in no 
degree lightened by the successful defense at Ogdensburg, 
where one thousand Americans succeeded in driving off four 
hundred British besiegers ; for, early in the next year of the 
war (1813), Ogdensburg fell. 

Winchester's terrible defeat on the river Raisin and the 
bloody massacre of his troops by the inhuman Proctor was 
scarcely retrieved by the defense of Fort Meigs and the brave 
stand of Croghan at Fort Stephenson. Harrison's invasion of 
Canada did lead to a victory on the Thames where thirty-five 
hundred Americans routed an inferior force of sixteen hundred 
British and Indians and ended in the death ^of the heroic 
Tecumthe ; but the capture of Fort George by the Americans 
was, soon after, altogether neutralized by the spiritless and 
unnecessary surrender of the fort to the British. Then came 
the utter defeat of Chandler's invasion of Canada, the capture 
of Fort Niagara and the destruction of Buffalo, and the total 
failure of still another invasion of Canada led on by that 
military mountebank, the American general Wilkinson — a 
commander wdiom the indignant Scott hotly denounced as "an 
unprincipled imbecile." 

The army of Hampton on Lake Champlain seemed scarcely 
to dare lift a gun in protest while British invaders plundered 
Plattsburgh and Burlington. The three principal engagements 
of the year 1S13 were little more than routs of incompetent 
troops led by incapable generals ; they were victories for 
England when they should easily have been, instead, victorious 
engagements won by superior forces of Americans. 

Indeed, the opening years of this War of 181 2 were neither 
honorable to the American soldier nor helpful to the American 



A LEADERLESS WAR. 



147 



cause. For twelve years the war had been plainly foreseen. 
England's tyrannical encroachments upon American commerce, 
her contemptuous disregard of treaty stipulations and the rights 
of American seamen, her endeavors to antagonize and inflame 
the Indians within American territory and her unwarranted 




AT WORK ON THE TOR ITIICATIONS IN l8l2. 



trespassing upon the Western frontier had gradually forced 
America into armed resistance. And yet for this resistance no 
suitable preparation had been made by the government of the 
United States. 

It is true that a slicrht increase had been made in the number 



1 48 A LEADERLESS WAR. 

and strength of the regular army. By an act of Congress in 
1808 five regiments of infantry, one of riflemen and one each 
of light artillery and light dragoons had been added to the 
army. This increased the force, by the year 18 10, to nearly 
eioht thousand men. 

But popular approval did not go out kindly to such a 
strengthening of the army; even its slow development therefore 
was almost in spite of the protest of the majority. With the 
growth of the war-fever, however, bombast developed into action. 
When the news of war came to the ears of the people men of 
all classes awoke to their need for action and hastened to offer 
their services or to bear a helping hand in rearing defenses and 
strengthening fortifications. 

This sudden haste toward national defense however could 
not make up for the lack of material and the supineness of gov- 
ernment. President Madison, contrary to his own desires, was 
forced into war; but the politicians who had brought about the 
conflict had been so lax in military preparations that, as Pro- 
fessor Soley says, " while securing a political victory they pre- 
pared the way for a series of military defeats." 

How discouraging were these defeats during the opening 
years of the war we have already seen. And indeed it does 
seem almost incredible that a strong and vigorous people, 
angered over the invasion of their rights upon the seas and 
battling for the possession of those Western frontiers which 
they desired to secure as their children's inheritance, should 
lack either the warlike spirit or the warrior's valor. It is for 
us to remember, however, that it was not so much the lack of 
these fighting qualities as the absolute dearth of leaders that 
made the land operations of the American Soldier during the 
War of 18 1 2 so sorry a page in American history. 



A LEADERLESS WAR. 149 

The fighting strength of the nation just previous to the 
declaration of war was estimated in the militia returns of the 
States as very close upon seven hundred thousand men. 
Estimates however are not always a safe foundation. Numbers 
are often as shrinkins: as are the volunteers themselves when 
the bugles sound for action. The main dependence of a nation 
in the early stages of any war must rest rather upon well-fur- 
nished officers than upon the long muster-rolls of its recruits. 
And it is now generally conceded that the Army of the United 
States entered upon the second war with England " with few 
officers of professional training or traditions." The generals 
to whom commands were at first assigned were but superanu- 
ated soldiers who had outlived the fire, as they had the days, of 
the distant Revolution. The militia too were crude and 
unmanageable, with more taste for discussing the questionable 
plans of their superiors than for following them. 

And so, with raw levies unable to learn with sufficient speed 
the demands of military life and discipline, with incompetent 
generals who had either outgrown their fighting days or had 
not enough military intelligence to drill or to direct their 
followers, with distracted counsels among the rulers of the 
nation and with but a grudging support from the very people 
who talked the loudest about rights and privileges the United 
States of America essayed to cross swords with one of the most 
warlike of European nations. It was a power whose soldiers 
had faced the victorious armies of the great Napoleon, whose 
grenadiers were led on by generals schooled to the ways of war 
in the wild Mahratta battles of India or in the more momentous 
conflicts that had checked the career of the greatest of modern 
conquerors in the stubborn battles of the Spanish peninsula. 

181 3 was a year of failure for the American arms. 1814 



I50 A LEADERLESS WAR. 

was but little better. The exigencies of a losing fight were, 
however, developing certain capable commanders in the ranks 
of American captains. These generals indeed did not rise to 
the position of real leaders, but their very impatience over the 
disQ-race that was cloudins: the name of the American Soldier 
gave them so much determination that their earnest examples 
and their tireless efforts began at last to infuse something like 
discipline and effectiveness into the wavering ranks of an 
undisciplined army. 

In the swamps and morasses of the distant South the sturdy 
and unyielding Jackson was learning in the savage school of 
Indian warfare that untiring vigilance and sleepless energy that 
were to work such terrible results upon the veteran troops 
of England in the opening days of 1S15. The victory of 
Tohopeka, by which on the twenty-seventh of January, 18 14, 
General Andrew Jackson, after a furious fight of more than 
five hours, broke forever the power of the Creek Confederacy, 
found its still greater results in the more glorious but utterly 
needless victory at New Orleans. In the north, upon the 
Canadian frontier, the patience and persistence of W'infield 
Scott imparted a steadiness and efiiciency to those uncertain 
volunteers who had rallied to the defense of the northern 
border. The ludicrous failure of Wilkinson with which the cam- 
paign of 1814 had opened was fully retrieved by the gallantry of 
Scott's brigade at Chippe vay and the obstinate courage of that 
same band of fighters at Lundy's Lane. And yet neither 
Chippeway nor Lundy's Lane can rightfully be claimed as 
American victories. They were simply not American defeats; 
and it is the chief glory of both these savage actions that they 
showed the spirit that really slumbered in American fighting 
men and by their obstinacy changed British contempt into 



A LEADERLESS WAR. 151 

British caution. Even William James, most prejudiced of all 
the English chroniclers of this war with America, is forced to 
admit that, " upon the whole, the American troops fought 
bravely; and the conduct of many of the officers would have 
done honor to any service." 

And yet that same year of 18 14 saw the glory of American 
endeavor at Chippeway and Lundy's Lane clouded by the shame 
of American feebleness on the Chesapeake. No page in Ameri- 
can history is more disgraceful than that which tells of the 
invasion of Maryland by the British troops and how a small 
force of the red-coated enemy put to flight a largely superior 
force of Americans at Bladensburg, set the whole American 
government in hasty and undignified retreat from the American 
capital, captured Washington, destroyed the public buildings, 
scattered the Americans by a vigorous bayonet charge at North 
Point and spread terror and dismay through all the Chesapeake 
region. 

" That Americans," says Professor Soley. " when properly 
led could make as good fighting material as any other people, 
had been shown in the Revolution and was still more forcibly 
shown, later, in the war with Mexico and in the Civil War; 
but in 181 2-1 5 they were without leaders. With the exception 
of Brown, Jackson, Scott, Gaines, Harrison, Macomb, and 
Ripley, most of whom were at first in subordinate positions, 
there were few general officers worthy of the name and it 
required only the simplest strategic movement to demonstrate 
their incompetency." " The British regulars," says Mr. Roose- 
velt, " trained in many wars thrashed the raw troops opposed 
to them whenever they had anything like a fair chance. Our 
defeats were exactly such as any man might have foreseen 
and there is nothing to be learned by the student of military 



152 A LEADERLESS WAR. 

matters from the follies committed by incompetent com- 
manders and untrained troops when in the presence of skilled 
officers having under them disciplined soldiers." 

It is a truth not to be disguised that this War of 1812, 
which from the outset was so marred by " the humiliating 
surrenders, abortive attacks and panic routs " of the land forces 
of the Union, was turned into victory and success by the 
darins: and the dash of the American Sailor. 

But this is the darker side of the annals. It would indeed 
be a diso^raceful stain on the soldier's record of American valor if 
the story of our second war with England rested here. With 
a brave people, out of defeat springs new determination ; out 
of humiliation, heroism. 

It is this regal purpose that we can read between the lines 
as we trace that record of disaster by land and of victory on 
the sea. The story of the land operations which began in loss 
at Mackinaw and ended in triumph at New Orleans is an ever- 
increasing assurance of the growing valor, persistence and 
patriotism of the American Soldier. Hampered by all the 
restrictions that must spring from a weak and wavering govern- 
ment, from internal dissensions and political strifes, from raw 
and unsteady comrades and from the disheartening incom- 
petency of generals who would be leaders but could not, the 
soldiers of the United States learned steadiness from disaster 
and determination from disgrace, and gradually developed 
into seasoned fighters who could play on even terms with 
the British invaders. 

Thus, step by step, the militia-man became the veteran. 
The gallantry of Croghan and his weakened garrison at Fort 
Stephenson, the irresistible charge of the mounted riflemen of 
Kentucky who broke the line of Proctor's regulars at the 




CAl'TAIN HINDMAN AT KORT C.KORGE. 



^u 



A LEADERLESS WAR. 155 

battle of the Thames showed, each of them, that even thus 
early in the war the old-time American valor was by no means 
a forgotten quantity. 

The terrible bayonet charge with which in fair fight the 
valiant fellows of Scott's brigade hurled backward in flight an 
equal force of British regulars and turned the day at Chippeway ; 
the inspiring valor with which at Lundy s Lane the modest but 
gallant Miller led his men against the battery on the hill and 
carried it by an assault that was as full of danger as it was 
of bravery; the equal gallantry with which Ripley and his 
comrades held that same captured hill-top against three des- 
perate assaults by the enemy's entire force ; the bold and 
masterly sortie from beleaguered Fort Erie, by which General 
Gaines scattered the British besiegers, saved his post and, 
indeed, the whole New York frontier — a dash which for 
brilliancy, so one author asserts, " has never been excelled by 
any event in the same scale in military history'' — these, as the 
war progressed, were convincing proofs that American courage 
only needed opportunity to display itself even upon the most 
uncertain field. 

When at Lundy 's Lane Colonel James Miller was ordered 
to storm and capture the British battery to which reference has 
already been made and which, crowning a hill-top, was really 
the key to the enemy's position he made but the simple reply : 
" ril try, sir" — and took it! "If success attend my steps," 
wrote, in a letter to his father, that General Pike who in 181 3 
led into Canada the successful invasion that cost him his life, 
" honor and glory await my name ; if defeat still shall it be said 
that we died like brave men and conferred honor, even in death, 
on the American name." " We demand the joint use with you 
of this Lake Ontario as a public highway, or you shall not 



156 A LEADERLESS WAR. 

detach your troops," said Colonel Van Rensselaer, standing 
under a flag of truce in British headquarters. This audacious 
demand being denied, the young American colonel declared 
that all negotiations for an armistice were at an end. The 
boldness of his stand angered the British officers. They sprang 
to their feet while General Sheaffe, their commander, signifi- 
cantly placing his hand on his sword-hilt said sternly, " Sir, you 
take high ground." Nothing daunted by this hostile attitude 
of his enemies Van Rensselaer as quickly clapped hand to his 
own sword-hilt and replied " I do, sir, and will maintain it ; but 
you dare not detach the troops." Such pluck found recognition 
from the British soldier; he begged Van Rensselaer's pardon 
for his hastiness and agreed to the joint use of the Lake. On 
the ninth of May, 181 3, there came a lull in the vigorous bom- 
bardment of Fort Meigs. Under a flag of truce Major Cham- 
bers representing the British besiegers was introduced into the 
presence of General Harrison, the commander of the American 
post. He presented a demand for the immediate surrender of 
the fort. " Assure General Proctor," was Harrison's reply, 
" that he will never have this post surrendered to him upon any 
terms. Should it fall into his hands it will be in a manner 
calculated to do him more honor than any capitulation could 
possibly do." So pluckily did Harrison keep his word that the 
" butcher of Frenchtown " fell back baffled and defeated. 

The spirit that lived in such words as these that came from 
the lips of officers, gradually found its counterpart in the sub- 
ordinates or privates who fought under them. The younger 
officers quickly imbibed this growing confidence and determi- 
nation. We read of one passage of arms within sound of the 
roar of Niagara marked for especial brilliancy and valor in 
which not a single American officer engaged in the fight was 



A LEADERLESS WAR. 157 

above the rank of captain. It was here that young Captain 
Wool — destined to become in years after a grizzled veteran in 
the Mexican War — already sorely wounded but still eager for 
action, under a killing fire from the enemy charged up the hill 
at Fort Georoe and won the heights of Lewiston. It was this 
same brave young fellow of twenty-four who later in the day 
when a less daring brother officer would have displayed the 
flag of surrender indignantly snatched the fluttering handker- 
chief from the bayonet point and cheered on his men to such a 
desperate bayonet charge that the enemy broke before his 
impetuosity while the Forty-Ninth Grenadiers, one of the most 
famous of the British regiments, turned and fled in dismay. 
The " ril try, sir! " of Miller at Lundy's Lane was a text upon 
which thereafter many a dashing officer and many a valiant 
private preached by his acts a stirring sermon on American 
valor. 

Notwithstanding the lack of example in the higher officers 
in this leaderless war the records of the privates who fought 
through it are bv no means barren of pluck and heroism. It is 
said that when Winchester surrendered his command to the 
British butcher Proctor many of the soldiers declared that they 
would not submit to the terms. They had come there to fight 
the British and fight they would. They plead with their officers 
to stand firm ; some even wept tears of disgrace and mortifica- 
tion and declared they would rather die on the field. When 
ordered finally to lay down their arms in surrender they threw 
them upon the ground with such rage and indignation as to 
shiver the stocks from the barrels and they declared to the 
British soldiers that their general had sold out " the greatest 
set of game-cocks that ever came from old Kentuck." 

At the time of the disastrous British attack on Washincr- 



'58 



A LEADEKLESS WAR. 



ton and the surrounding country in 1814 Private John O'Neil 
was the only faithful militia-man in the " Potato Battery " at 
Havre de Grace. When all his comrades had fled he sturdily 
stuck to his guns while fifteen British barges pounded away at 
the little fort. While the grapeshot flew thickest about him 




PACKENIIA.M'b CHARGE AT THE KAITLE OF NEW ORLEANS. 

he coolly loaded, served and fired the nine-pounder mounted on 
the battery and then, being wounded by the recoil, retreated to 
a nail factory where he kept up the fight until his powder was 
exhausted. Wounded and without ammunition then only did 
he admit himself defeated and surrender himself and his two 
empty muskets to a British officer. 



A LEADERLESS WAR. 159 

On the eve of battle near Fort Wayne, Genera] Harrison 
read to the volunteers under his command some of the 
regulations and restrictions that were made necessary by the 
articles of war. He then declared that if any among the 
volunteers did not feel willing to submit to such restrictions 
they might return home. Only one man availed himself of 
this offer. Thereupon several of his acquaintances, receiving 
permission to escort him out of the camp, mounted him upon a 
rail, carried him to the river and there ruthlessly ducked him 
again and again in order as they said " to wash away all his 
patriotism." 

At the battle of Frenchtown Major Graves, gallantly leading 
his men against an overwhelming force of the enemy, fell with 
a shot in his knee. Still cheering on his men he cried out, 
" Boys, I am wounded ; never mind me, but fight on." 

At the capture of Fort George, Hindman a Maryland 
captain, belying the suggestion of his name, was almost the 
first man in the fort. Hearing a rumor that the enemy were 
to blow up the works rather than let them pass into American 
hands Hindman at the sword's point, compelled a British ser- 
geant to lead him to the magazine. Careless of personal danger 
he snatched away the rapidly burning fuse that was fast ap- 
proaching the powder and thus saved the fort and his comrades. 

Instances of personal valor such as these could be multiplied 
in proof of the assertion that while this leaderless War of 181 2 
was deficient in the brilliant enterprises and dashing achieve- 
ments that, more than all else, give to war its romance and 
its glitter, there still lived in the hearts of the people that 
individual bravery and dauntless courage without which, when 
pushed to the wall by its foes, a nation cannot hope for 
success. 



i6o A LEADERLESS WAR. 

Militia-men might hesitate, waver and run away; regulars 
might fail when most they should have been relied upon ; 
commanders might blunder, wrangle and even show the white 
feather, but the valor of one man can often save a host from 
disgrace ; the desperation of a forlorn hope outlives the cowardice 
of an army. 

So throuoh the war, marked as it was with records of 
American imbecility and British inhumanity, the development 
of the national courage went slowly forward. Out of unsteadi- 
ness grew discipline, out of foolish boastings came stern deter- 
mination, out of faintheartedness sprang valor. The irrespon- 
sible State detachments, amenable to their own oflficers, jealous 
of the regulars and of the war-department officers, gradually 
merged their personalities and their local names of " Fusileers," 
" Hussars," and " Rifles " into the broader title of American 
Soldiers and proved, in such fights as Chippeway, their right to 
the name of warriors and in such engagements as New Orleans 
their appreciation of what that name really meant. 

" We have now got an enemy who fights as bravely as our- 
selves," wrote an English officer after the battle of Chippeway. 
"They have now proved to us that they only wanted to acquire 
a little discipline ; they have now proved to us what they are 
made of; and they are the same sort of men as those who cap- 
tured whole armies under Burgoyne and Cornwallis ; they are 
neither to be frightened nor to be silenced." 

The great battle of the war was unquestionably the action 
at New Orleans. Had but the ocean cable then spanned the 
Atlantic, like a living cord uniting the nations, the news of 
peace flashed beneath the waters would have rendered New 
Orleans unnecessary. But on the other hand it would have 
withheld from the crest of the American soldier one of his 



A LEADERLESS WAR. i6i 

most proudly-worn trophies ; it would have taken from the 
hereditary taunt of the hater of England its severest sting. 
Bloody and unnecessary though it was, it stands in history as 
so notable a monument to the skill of a great commander and 
the valor of a volunteer army that it finds fitting mention in 
the story of the American Soldier. 

As first looked at this battle of New Orleans seems full of 
inconsistencies. Ten thousand British regulars, the bravest 
and most hardy of the veteran fighters of Wellington's Penin- 
sular Army, with a record of six years of uninterrupted success, 
were to face in fight less than five thousand soldiers drawn from 
the fio^htino: stock of a nation deficient at that time in all the 
elements that constitute successful warfare. To be sure the 
undisciplined five thousand were shielded behind mud-breast- 
works ; but what was that to the valiant warriors who had 
stormed the fortifications at Toulouse, and Badajos, and Ciudad 
Rodrigo .f* With the exception of Wellington no general 
officer in the British army was counted the equal of Sir Edward 
Packenham. Opposed to him was a leader unskilled in the 
science of war, sadly deficient in the knowledge of tactics and 
utterly lacking in those personal qualifications necessary to 
what is known as the courtesy of camps. He was in the eyes 
of the brilliant British general only " a grizzled old bush-fighter 
whose name had never been heard of outside of his own 
swamps." 

But it is the unexpected that is always happening. If 
Jackson was lacking in the art of war he was possessed of that 
higher military genius that rises superior to science and to 
tactics. His conquest of the warlike Indian tribes of the South 
had taught him a wariness that could never know surprise, an 
energy that was tireless, and a courage that was as unfaltering 



1 62 A LEADERLESS WAR. 

as it was obstinate. With almost no support from the demor- 
alized national government, drawing his soldiery (with the 
exception of seven hundred regulars) from the widely-scattered 
settlements of the southern border, he massed his men behind 
a low line of mud-breastworks, manned his guns with frontier 
fighters who were sharp of eye and sure of aim and waited for 
the morning. 

It was the eighth of January, 1815. " At last," says Mr. 
Roosevelt, " the sun rose. As its beams struooried throueh 
the morning mist they glinted on the sharp steel bayonets of 
the English, where their scarlet ranks were drawn up in battle 
array, but four hundred yards from the American breastworks. 
There stood the matchless infantry of the island king, in the 
pride of their strength and the splendor of their martial glory ; 
and as the haze cleared away they moved forward, in stern 
silence, broken only by the angry, snarling notes of the brazen 
bugles. At once the American artillery leaped into furious 
life ; and, ready and quick, the more numerous cannon of the 
invaders responded from their hot, feverish lips. Unshaken 
amid the tumult of that iron storm the heavy red column moved 
steadily on toward the left of the American line, where the 
Tennesseeans were standing in motionless, grim expectancy. 
Three fourths of the open space was crossed, and the eager sol- 
diers broke into a run. Then a fire of hell smote the British 
column. From the breastwork in front of them the white smoke 
curled thick into the air, as, rank after rank, the wild marksmen 
of the backwoods rose and fired, aiming lovv and sure. As 
stubble is withered by flame, so withered the British column 
under that deadly fire ; and, aghast at the slaughter, the reel- 
ing files staggered and gave back. Packenham, fit captain for 
his valorous host, rode to the front, and the troops, rallying 



A LEADERLESS WAR. 163 

round him, sprang forward with ringing cheers. But once 
again the peaHng rifle-blast beat in their faces ; and the life of 
their dauntless leader went out before its scorching and fiery 
breath. 

" With him fell the other general who was with the 
column, and all of the men who were leadinq- it on ; and, as a 
last resource, Keane brought up his stalwart Highlanders; but 
in vain the stubborn mountaineers rushed on, only to die as 
their comrades had died before them, with unconquerable cour- 
age, facing the foe, to the last. Keane himself was struck 
down ; and the shattered wrecks of the 
British column, quailing before certain 
destruction, turned and sought refuge 
beyond reach of the leaden death that had 
overwhelmed their comrades. 

" Nor did it fare better with the 
weaker force that was to assail the right 
of the American line. This was led by 
the dashing Colonel Rennie, who, when 

. , ANDREW JACKSON. 

the confusion caused by the main attack 

w^as at its height, rushed forward with impetuous bravery along 
the river bank. With headlong fury Rennie flung his men at 
the breastworks and, gallantly leading them, sword in hand, 
he, and all around him, fell, riddled through and through by 
the balls of the riflemen. Brave though they were, the British 
soldiers could not stand against the singing, leaden hail, or if 
they stood it was but to die. So in rout and wild dismav they 
fled back along the river bank, to the main army." 

" By eight o'clock," says Mr. Thompson, " the harvest was 
over; the red field of the eighth of January had been mowed. 
In front of Humphrey's batteries stretched the tangled wind- 




1 64 A LEADERLESS WAR. 

rows of mangled dead ; prone beneath the deadly riflemen of 
Beale's little command the red-coats lay in heaps ; the swaths 
cut down by Carrol and Adair were horrible to see. What 
slaughter; what a victory! Over two thousand British lay 
dead or helpless on the field. And what of Jackson's little 
army.f^ How many killed.^ Just eight men! How many 
wounded t Thirteen men, and no more ! " 

It was a victory as complete as it was surprising. But 
while the Creoles of New Orleans fouo-ht with a valor all the 
more desperate because they were defending their homes from 
pillage, while the rifles of Tennessee and Kentucky spread a 
havoc that was as certain as it was terrible, while the pirates of 
Barataria and the sailor-volunteers added alike picturesqueness 
and ferocity to that dim fighting in a fog it must not be for- 
gotten that the credit of the victory at New Orleans mainly 
belongs to the man whose foresight planned and whose courage 
effected the result — Andrew Jackson, the general. 

It was a brilliant close to a war that lacked brilliancy. It 
was a dramatic ending to a conflict that, upon the land at least, 
had, for the most part, been listless and tame indeed ; it was the 
final vindication, in an era when such a setting right seemed 
almost impossible, of the pluck and the bravery, the steadfast- 
ness and the valor of the American Soldier. 

Great generals rise but seldom above the level of their 
troops. Signal victories, attained by the indomitable will of 
one leader, are almost exceptions in history. Without the rank 
and file the commander would be less than a unit. But the 
battle of New Orleans was one of these exceptions. The 
genius of its valiant leader rose superior to all obstacles. 

The credit for the one victory of the War of 1812 rightly 
belongs to one man — Andrew Jackson of Tennessee — " who," 



A LEADERLESS WAR. 165 

once more to quote from Mr. Roosevelt's summing-up of the 
fight, " with his cool head and quick eye, his stout heart and 
strong hand, stands out in history as the ablest general the 
United States produced from the outbreak of the Revolution 
down to the beginning of the great Rebellion." The leaderless 
war was closed by a leader indeed. 



CHAPTER VIIL 



WARS AND RUMORS OF WAR. 




iHE bells of 1815 as they rang out the 
glad tidings of peace lulled a nation to 
rest. The war was over. The people 
were thankful. The good ship For- 
tune, sailing into New York harbor on 
the eleventh of February in that year 
of peace with the news of the treaty 
of Ghent, bore precious freight. The 
rancors of divided councils were settled 
and a distracted land set to work to 
recover as speedily as possible from the 
loss of the hundred million hard dollars 
and the thirty thousand good lives that the war had cost. 

The motley militia-men of the several States returned to 
their homes; at least three thousand of those thirteen thousand 
stiff parade hats and uncomfortable-looking uniforms that had 
been the distinouishins^ mark of the reQ:ulars of 181 2 were laid 
aside and the army of the United States was reduced to a 
peace footing of less than ten thousand men. 

But though at peace with the outside world there was still 
call for musket and bayonet, saber and spur. The feeble 

power of Spain though ever so feebly defended was a menace 

166 



JFAA'S AND RUMORS OF WAR. 167 

to the growth of the republic in the south and west. The 
constant intrigues of intriguing England kept alive a continual 
boundary trouble in the north. Upon the fringe of forest that 
marked the country's vast frontier rested the ever-present dread 
of Indian attack and ferocity. It behooved the nation to sleep 
on its arms. 

Scarcely had the echoes of the victorious guns at New 
Orleans died away when trouble broke out in that section of 
the southern land known as East Florida. British agents 
stirred the Indians to hostility and the blacks to revolt, 
working their inhuman schemes in the Spanish territory that 
touched the American border. Here first, in 18 16, Colonel 
Clinch took the field against the half-breed marauders and 
with a picked force of United States regulars stormed the 
combined negro and Indian stronghold which the English 
had established on the Appalachicola River; but trouble stiK 
continued and was only brought to an end by the prompt, 
energetic and decisive measures of that indomitable Jackson 
whom men, for his toughness and his integrity, loved to call 
" Old Hickory." 

Spain's power was weakening. Across the boundary, lured 
on by hope of booty, there swarmed in the spring of 181 7 that 
motley crowd of picturesque adventurers and piratical tramps 
self-styled the "Patriot Army of the Republics of New Granada 
and Venezuela." With a name that meant nothing but a cover 
for rascality, as lawless as they were irresponsible, this crowd 
of old-time "boomers" burst across the Spanish borders and 
forced the timorous commandant to lower the flao- of his kino- 
before their insolent demands. 

The government of the United States, unwilling to allow 
a band of desperadoes to occupy, lawfully or unlawfully, by 



1 68 IVAJ?S AND RUMORS OF WAR. 

conquest or otherwise, any portion of the land that should be 
American only, sent troops into Florida, drove out the ques- 
tionable " Patriots " and took possession of the country. 

Followins: this came the Seminole trouble of 1818. An 
Indian outbreak that scarcely rose above the dignity of a savage 
foray it was openly fostered by British influence and winked at 
by Spanish incompetency. 

Then it was that Jackson with a slender army of invasion 
marched against the Indians. With his sharpshooters and his 
home-raised militia he fell upon the red-men, burned their vil- 
lages, drove them into the swamps and morasses of the lower 
peninsula, captured and hung the British agents and taking 
possession of the last Spanish post of Pensacola sent the gar- 
rison flying across the water to Havana. It was an act of 
usurpation as high-handed as it was patriotic. But, in periods 
of great public danger, might is ever esteemed as right, and 
Jackson's energetic measures saved the southern border from 
pillage and made Florida forever American. 

This was in 18 iS. In 182 1 Florida passed by sale and treaty 
into the possession of the United States. Once an American 
territory settlement grew. The American settler has always 
been restless under restrictions. Seeking to conquer the forest 
and the plain with axe and plough, he has always held as an 
enemy those earlier red possessors of the soil to whom axe and 
plough have ever been but the hated instruments of the white 
men's hated ways. From the days of the earliest colonization 
this hostility has burned or smouldered according to opportunity 
and every acre of border cultivation has been won only in the 
face of bitter opposition or of open "outrage " on the part of 
the Indian. The occupation of Florida proved no exception to 
the rule. Inch by inch the Indians in the north of the flowery 



WARS AND RUMORS OF WAR. 



169 



peninsula were pressed into the swamps, the forests and the 
fastnesses of the south. Protest led to recrimination ; to this 
succeeded open hostilities. In 1S35 Indian retaliation broke 
out into warfare and a United States military force, comprising 
fourteen companies of regular troops, was dispatched against 




JACKSON S SHARPSHOOTERS. 



the Florida Indians. Force and ferocity met face to face and 
the government of the United States had upon its hands that 
series of battles and conflicts known to history as the Florida 
or " Seminole " War. 

This was no new experience either to government or army. 



lyo JVA/^S AND RUMORS OF WAR. 

Already in the west a still more formidable because better 
organized Indian war had been met, grappled with and forced 
to a successful termination. In 1827 the Winnebagoes of Illi- 
nois had risen against the occupation of their land by the lead 
miners of Galena and joining to themselves the still more war- 
like Sioux plunged the country into war. The miners were 
formed into companies and equipped for action. Illinois volun- 
teers hurried to the scene of trouble and six hundred United 
States regulars were added to the army. The Winnebago War 
was of short duration. The show of force brought by the 
authorities speedily overawed the hostile savages and the poor 
Winnebagoes, as many another Indian has done, before and 
since, abandoned their prairies to the greedy grasp of the white 
man. The only noble figure that stands out against the back- 
ground of this little war cloud is that of the noble Sioux chieftain 
Red Bird who, when the Winnebagoes whom he had incited to 
hostility were pressed into defeat by the victorious white men, 
-offered himself as the voluntary sacrifice for those whom he 
would not desert. Robed in skins and bearing a white flag, he 
rode into the United States camp and surrendered himself a 
voluntary prisoner with the spirit of one who though conquered 
was yet a conqueror. To the shame of American justice it 
must be said that this heroic " savage " was, without compunc- 
tion, thrown into prison where he sickened and died of the 
humiliation of restraint. 

But out of this Winnebago war rose speedily the greater 
and much more serious trouble known as the Black Hawk W^ar. 
That celebrated Indian patriot known to the white men as 
Black Hawk, the chief of the Sacs, had allied himself with the 
Winnebagoes, had suffered imprisonment at the hands of the 
white conquerors and was filled with resentment against 



IVAJ^S AND RUMORS OF WAR. 171 

the settlers because of this indignity and because of the per- 
sistent encroachments of the white men upon the lands of his 
tribe. Removed under protest to the region beyond the Mis- 
sissippi he chafed under this action and as soon as the military 
were withdrawn he returned to the Illinois country with a band 
of warriors as determined as was he. There on the fourteenth 
of May, 1832, he fell upon the United States soldiers on Syca- 
more Creek and defeated them with considerable loss. The 
settlers flew to arms. General Winfield Scott was assigned to 
the command and hastened westward with one thousand regu- 
lars to the assistance of the border volunteers who had taken 
the field against the redoubtable Indian chieftain. The war of 
course could have but one issue. In all the history of Indian 
warfare in America the final victory has always been vouch- 
safed to the white men ; but before that victory had been 
attained the conflict had known, as well on the savaoe as on 
the civilized side, many an instance of courage and valor, of 
self-sacrifice and renown, of cruelty and cowardice. Black 
Hawk was a born warrior. A Kentuckian and therefore an 
Indian hater, in his story of the action of Sycamore Creek 
referred to above, asserted that the Indian army came against 
them not in the old-style skulking way of the savage but in 
solid column, deploying in the form of a crescent upon the 
borders of the prairie and with accuracy and precision in every 
movement. It must be said of this same Kentuckian private 
that perhaps his eyes played him false as his heart certainly 
did, for when the battle was joined he became a sadly-demora- 
lized fighter. As the Indian attack fell upon his column he 
confesses that he made a retroo^rade movement and remained 
some time meditating what further he could do in the service 
of his country. " Then a random ball came whistling by my 



172 WAJ^S AND RUMORS OF WAR. 

ear and whispered to me : ' Stranger, you have no further 
business here.' " Upon hearing this, he confesses, he followed 
the example of his companions in arms " and broke for the tall 
timber, and the way I ran was not a little." 

But there were those who did not run. The war was prose- 
cuted with firmness and energy on the part of the United 
States, with obstinacy and determination by Black Hawk and 
his followers. The battle of the Wisconsin however as the 
first decisive battle of the war threw the advantage and the 
victory into the hands of the Americans. The battle of the 
Bad Axe, fought on the second of August, 1832, drove the 
Indians into the Mississippi and defeat. 

There never has been a war on American soil, since first 
the republic was proclaimed, that did not exhibit certain phases 
of that never-ending jealousy that has always seemed to exist 
between the res^ulars and the militia. Even in this Black 
Hawk War — a local disturbance only so far as the countr)- at 
large was concerned — the success of the Illinois militia under 
General Henry, "the hero of the Wisconsin" as his own peo- 
ple loved to call him, was belittled by the officers of the regular 
army and overslaughed by Henry's own fellow officers who 
were jealous of their comrade's brilliant success. Honor to 
whom honor is due ; and even at this late day it would seem 
but a slight acknowledgment of duty done and valor displayed 
to eive alike the credit and the honor of the Black Hawk Cam- 
paign to the volunteers of the western border and to their 
energetic commander General lames B. Henrv whose intre- 
pidity and good judgment turned defeat into victory in the 
battle of the Wisconsin and ended the war at Bad Axe. 

Although General Scott did not actually assume command 
of the army in the Black Hawk War until after Henry and 



WARS AND RUMORS OF JVAR. 173 

Alexander had practically closed the campaign, the trouble 
was virtually concluded under his direction and when the 
Seminole trouble in Florida, in 1835, assumed serious propor- 
tions he was dispatched to the front by the War Department 
with a considerable and well-organized army. It was largely 
under his direction that the Florida war was wao-ed, 

O 

From the start this war was fought out by the Indians with 
divided counsels. It sprang originally from an alleged infraction 
of treaty and leading chiefs of the Seminoles were still inclined 
to adhere to their promises as made under the treaty. The 
Seminole war was therefore not directly due to the leading 
Indians but was fostered and kept alive by the unyielding 
hatred and persistence of one man — Asseola (mistakenly called 
Osceola) the half-breed. Compounded of many diverse ele- 
ments, with a character that was in many respects alien to 
Indian life and laws, Asseola added to the obstinacy of the 
Scotchman the worst traits of the red-man, and the Florida 
war was one long record of treacheries, inhumanities, surprises 
and dogged determination that, to a certain extent, explains 
how, in so narrow a strip of country as is the Florida peninsula, 
hostilities could be kept alive for nearly seven years. 

The courage of the soldiers sent to the war by the settlers 
of the South and by the War Department was high; their 
desires for deeds of prowess were strong; but the fight was 
a long and wasting one and was based upon the customary 
Indian tactics of predatory forays, ambush and secrecy. The 
bravery of the soldier could only be shown in his continual 
wariness, his ability to ferret out the hiding foeman, his resort 
to stratagem and decoy, and his facing the Indian obstinacy 
with that higher persistence and determination with which 
intelligence always confronts savagery. 



174 U'A/^S AND RUMORS OF WAR. 

From 1835 to 1842 the war dragged on. Gaines, Scott, 
Call, Jesup, Taylor and Armistead each, in turn, succeeded to 
the oreneral command or were superseded in it. The trouble 
was finally brought to a close after the expenditure of many 
lives and a large sum of money by that dashing soldier whose 
valor was to be even more severely tested on the plains of 
Mexico — General Thomas Worth. He succeeded to the com- 
mand of the army in Florida in 1841. Conqueror in an active 
campaign, he penetrated into the inaccessible swamps and fast- 
nesses where the Seminoles had taken refuge, forced them to 
a final surrender and to a removal to the far West. Already 
in 1836 Asseola the half-breed had been captured by stratagem 
and fraud and thrown into prison never to emerge alive. And 
thus another chapter in the sad story of the hopelessness of 
savage patriotism was written in blood and loss. 

As typical of the Indian determination and the American 
persistence which, as has already been said, joined issue in this 
Seminole War, and as presenting all the varying phases 
of surprise and strategy, of ferocity and revenge, must ever 
stand the terrible story of that heroic defense made in the 
swamps of the Withlacoochee by Major Dade and his brave 
one hundred. 

Ambushed and attacked by a strong party of savages on the 
morning of the twenty-eighth of December, 1835, while chang- 
ing camp north of the Little Withlacoochee the troops quickly 
recovered from their surprise and charged the hidden foe. 
Beneath the thin shadow of the palmettoes where a stretch of 
high Southern Q-rass almost concealed the skulkinor enemv the 
combatants met and fought hand to hand. Scalping knife and 
bayonet, clubbed musket and murderous hatchet clashed in the 
death grapple and even before the red-men had been driven 



JVAJ?S AND RUMORS OF WAR. 



175 



back, Major Dade fell dead. His successor Captain Gardiner 
at once proceeded to throw up a slender breastwork which 
should serve as a slight obstacle to the assaults of the Indians 



'»" 



again gathering for the attack. Before the feeble defense had 
risen to the height of two and a half feet the Indians, now 
largely reinforced, swarmed down upon the gallant little band. 
The yells of the savages drowned the noise of the muskets. 
In large numbers they surrounded that frail breastwork and 
shot down every man who attempted to serve the one gun that 
was its sole defense. Officer after officer was killed. At last 
only one reniained. This was Lieutenant Bassinger. As he 
saw the last one above him in rank fall beneath the murderous 
fire he called out pluckily, " I'm the only officer left, boys ; but 
we'll all do the best we can." 

Poor fellows ! their best was but to die bravely. And that 
they did. A fair prototype of that later day when on Western 
plains the brave fellows of Custer's command went down to a 
man, so now the forlorn hope of the gallant Dade stood val- 
iantly to their work and the fight ended only when life and 
ammunition gave out together. Over the frail inclosure burst 
the victorious savages but there were no defenders left. Every 
man in that brave little company save one who managed to 
escape with the tidings of defeat, lay dead or dying within the 
space of their defenses. And when the Indians had taken their 
customary toll of scalps and departed, the runaway negroes 
who had sided with the Indians — a step lower down in savagery 
than were their red allies — completed the work of slaughter- 
ing the defenseless and pillaging the dead. But no indignity 
could efface the glory of that day's heroism. The valor of 
defeat is sometimes more deathless than is the jubilee shout 
of triumph. 



176 IVA/^S AND RUMORS OF WAR. 

The Black Hawk campaign and the Seminole War were the 
leading military events of that era of national peace that 
bridged the years between the treaty of Ghent and the war with 
Mexico. And yet within that time there were rumors of war 
forever in the air, there were internal disturbances that kept 
the War Department ever on the alert. 

Most serious of all these internal dissensions, in its possible 
results (although the determined stand of one man stamped 
sternly out the incipient revolt which his over-sternness had 
nearly brought about), were the " Nullification Troubles " of 
1832 when South Carolina, enraged at President Jackson's 
position upon the question of State rights, sought to nullify 
certain customs laws passed by Congress and openly defied the 
power of the United States. 

The same stern sense of duty, the same inflexible courage 
that had broken the Creek confederacy at Horse Shoe Bend, that 
had hurled back the army of Packenham from the mud breast- 
works before New Orleans and had sent the Spaniards flying 
from Pensacola as^ain asserted themselves and could find in the 
defiant position of a hot-headed Southern State only a greater 
incentive to patriotism, only the demand for a justice that must 
be inexorable. Andrew Jackson was not a man to yield. 

" By the Eternal ! " the stout old soldier-president declared 
in one of his favorite explosives, " the Union must and shall 
be preserved. Send for General Scott ! " 

Quick to respond to the call of his country General Scott 
came and, with most of the available troops of the United 
States army, he was hurried at once to the city of Charleston, 
the center of the threatened insurrection. 

But though the military of the State was duly ordered out 
to repel the " invaders " the determined stand of the stout old 



WA/^S AND RUMORS OF WAR. 177 

hero of New Orleans had ahnost instant effect. Defiance 
changed to compliance, and this earliest attempt of a State to 
revolt against the nation of which it was a component part 
was itself " nullified " by the unyielding patriotism of that 
nation's chief executive and by the bristling bayonets of that 
nation's regular soldiery. 

The country was growing rapidly. A ceaseless flow of 
immigration was changing the forests into farm lands, the 
prairies into pastures and wheat-fields. But growth implies 
unrest and the three decades between 181 5 and 1845 were 
marked with vain attempts at hostility or by vague rumors of 
trouble that never came. East, west and south this spirit 
of unrest repeatedly appeared and the ill effects of intrigue 
in politics or diplomacy seemed continually to threaten a 
contest. 

Now it was the Mormons who were reported to be aiming 
to subvert the institutions and the relio:ion of the land. Against 
them the people protested even to the verge of open assault 
and both the destruction of Nauvoo in Illinois and the anti- 
Mormon riots in Missouri called for the service of the soldiers 
of those States to scatter the militant sect. 

Again it was that outbreak of 1842 in Rhode Island known 
as Dorr's Rebellion — a protest unjustly derided, the real his- 
tory of which is yet to be written — that called the fighting 
men to arms ; or it was that serio-comic " invasion of Canada " 
in 1839 when seven hundred restless New Yorkers led by a 
descendant of the patroons of Rensselaer offered themselves 
as allies and supporters of a Canadian revolt against England, 
and the troops of the United States were hurried northward to 
enforce American neutrality and protect the disturbed frontiers. 
There were many local disturbances such as the " Anti-rent 



178 IVA/^S AND RUMORS OF WAR. 

war " in New York and the " Bank mobs " In Maryland that 
demanded the service of the miHtary arm to scatter or punish 
while even the political party cry of the presidential campaign 
of 1844: "fifty-four forty or fight!" — a demand for north- 
western boundaries that threatened a third war with England 
— filled the land with anxiety and fired the hearts of those 
ambitious for militarv glory. 

These and such as these, however serious, however ridicu- 
lous they might be, created, each, a certain demand for resist- 
ance by a show of force that should summon either the 
scattered ranks of the slender regular army or the uncertain 
files of an ail-too uncertain militia. In a free country the 
citizen is not inclined to do anything more than play at soldier 
until a real and stern demand calls him to duty and often to 
death. 

From a very early day, however, this playing at soldier has 
held an important place in American life. As early as 1666 
the colonial laws required all males among the colonists to 
attend military exercises and services. Companies were exercised 
six days annually, the captain opening every such training 
with prayer. The law of i 790 required every able-bodied male 
between the ages of eighteen and forty-five to meet with his 
military company four times each year for training and dis- 
cipline and the United States law of 1792 sought to establish 
a general militia system throughout the entire country. The 
Revolution had given a new impetus to the martial spirit ; the 
imbecilities of 18 12 gave it a spasmodic growth; and thus 
through the first half of the present century the "general 
training" and the muster day of the spring and fall were the 
red letter days of the year in all American towns. Let us for 
a moment, dear reader, be the " Father and I " of that rattllncr 



JVA/^S AND RUMORS OF WAR. 179 

old jingle that has now become historic — those two spectators 
who, say, in the early twenties or even in the early thirties 

Went down to camp 
Along with Cap'n Gooding, 
And there we saw the men and boys 
As thick as hasty-pudding." 

They are thick hereabouts and no mistake. People every- 
where. And as Cap'n Gooding leaves us and we shake from 
our shoes the dust of the dry road along which we have plodded 
to the camp we stand now upon the broad green or "Common" 
just beyond the limits of the county town. The field is 
Hanked with peddler's wagons and with booths and stands of 
every description hastily knocked together for " this day only." 
Muster day is a great incentive to inordinate appetite for 
indigestible stuffs and both at the town tavern close at hand 
and here in this encircling encampment of booths and wagons 
everything deemed most palatable in the way of eatables and 
drinkables is offered for sale alike to citizen and soldier. 

The shrill fife and the roll of drum call the soldiers to 
their stations. And now the regiment gathers together — a 
sight to behold. We stand on tiptoe to view the muster and 
the evolutions, for these are the days of simplicity in the 
republic and no such aristocratic luxuries as grand stands or 
tiers of seats are provided for the spectators. The regiment 
embraces the four divisions of the military service — artillery, 
grenadiers, light infantry, and riflemen with a dash of cavalry 
to add excitement to the scene. Here, too, come the ununi- 
formed raw recruits known as the " floodwood companies." 

The spectators are all agog. They are full of admiration for 
the cavalrymen, mounted on horses of every degree of mettle 



i8o JVAJ^S AND RUMORS OF WAR. 

and decked out in black suits faced, and corded with red. 
These sit astride their cumbrous saddles terrible with clanking 
cutlasses and formidable holsters into which are thrust the 
huge horse pistols of that ante-revolver day. The red leather 
helmets of the grenadiers gleam in the hot sun. Soft hats are 
as yet a thing unknown and the stiff black beavers of the 
riflemen in their quiet uniform of gray, and the black leather 
cap of the infantry, topped each with a black and red feather 
are as comfortless as they are unpicturesque. The infantry 
we shall look at again and again. Theirs is the most gorgeous 
of uniform. It is composed of white trousers and black coats 
the latter criss-crossed with white belts to which are chained 
priming wires, brushes and extra flints. The " floodwood " 
men are, as a rule, innocent of uniform. Only a tin badge dis- 
played in the front of their hat and bearing the letters L. I. 
tells us that these undecorated recruits (who generally outnumber 
the uniformed companies two to one) are really martial members 
of the Light Infantry of the State. They are a prosaic patch 
in a field of color. 

The color would seem to be the only picturesque element 
however, for the art of military tailoring was of a low grade in 
the twenties and thirties. Thoreau once said, " Wrap a salt-fish 
around a boy and he would have a coat much in the fashion o_f 
many a one I have seen worn at muster." 

And now comes inspection. The dull lines of the " flood- 
woods " (sober in their sheep's gray and blue jeans and 
armed with rifles, muskets and fowling pieces of every con- 
ceivable pattern) are ordered to "toe the mark" — a literal 
mark literally toed. Man by man the platoons are inspected 
and then along the line rides the Colonel and his staff, 
resplendent in brass buttons, big epaulets and vast cocked 



WARS AND RUMORS OF WAR. i8i 

hats. The music crashes out. It is more voluminous than 
harmonious for the instruments have come from all the towns 
about. Its only uniformity is its tendency to play out of tune. 
With a roll and a rattle the snare and kettle-drums burst out ; 
boom ! go the basses and high and shrill rise the notes of fife 
and clarionet, with here and there, perhaps, a Kent bugle — 
the father of the cornet. Still clashing out of tune the band 
gathers around the colonel while the regiment forms itself 
into a hollow square. And the colonel dofifing his chapeau, 
poses like the great Napoleon and after addressing a few 
complimentary words to his faithful regiment retires from 
the field. 

Inspection over, dinner follows. Then the noon gun calls 
the regiment back to the parade ground where each company 
tries to outdo the others in a competitive drill and evolutions 
the movements of which are all unknown to modern tactics. 

A break in the maneuvers is caused by those who, lacking 
cartridges, cannot, to the letter, obey the command : " Open 
pan; tear cartridge; point; shut pan; ram down cartridge! 
Ready! Aim! Fire!" Each cartridge-less one must go down 
into his breeches pocket for the well-filled powder-flask from 
which to prime his pan. And more than one unfortunate in 
the excitement of the moment, explodes his magazine in his 
capacious pocket and retires from the field singed and scorched 
— wrecked in whiskers, hair or eyebrows. 

Or perhaps the captain shouts " Lock-step and sit down ! " 
Then in single file the company march about, forming a circle 
in the center of. which stands the captain. To slow music the 
circle draws toward the center falling into the " lock-step " now 
only known to convict gangs. "Sit!" cries the captain, and 
down goes each man in the lap of his neighbor- — for all the 



1 82 JVAJ^S AND RUMORS OF WAR. 

world like a company of leap-frogs preparing to jump. In the 
center, perched high on a mackerel keg, stands the valiant 
captain with uplifted sword ; the music rises shrill and high 
and the admiring spectators wildly applaud the tableau. 

And now comes what the crowd consider the great event of 
the day — the sham battle. In a rudely constructed house of 




IN THE "ANTI-RENT WAR. 



boards and boughs, excluding air and light and supposed to 
represent a fort, one of the militia companies huddles impris- 
oned. Advancing by platoons the infantry men of the regiment 
march upon the fort, discharge their guns in air, wheel outward 
and retire to re-load. From the top of a neighboring hill boom 
out the blank charges of the artillery — a battery of bloodless 



WARS AND RUMORS OF WAR. 183 

besiegers. Still farther away the black coats of the cavalry- 
charge and swerve in a sham fiQ^ht on their own account. The 
air is filled with noise and smoke until the sweltering defenders 
of the fort, overcome by heat, rather than by heroism, gladly 
capitulate and marching out with all the honors of war give 
place in the fort to another company who immediately take 
possession of it, likewise to swelter and surrender. 

And when the sham fight is over the day's training at last is 
done. " Father and I " leave the field and return with Cap'n 
Goodin^ convinced that a muster is a Q-rand and glorious sight. 
And yet, notwithstanding this semi-annual exercise and 
evolution, it is asserted that in all those early days there was 
scarcely a company of militia-men really well drilled or pro- 
ficient in even the most simple military movement. 

Practically the United States were at peace from the close 
of the War of 181 2 to the opening of the war with Mexico in 
1846. Military duties were slighted and shirked by the majority 
of Americans who could poorly spare any of the precious time 
necessary to the noble science of money-making for such 
" fol-de-rols " as muster and parade. Gradually, so great was 
the contempt visited upon " belonging to the military " that the 
militia system itself fell into disrepute and became a butt and a 
reproach. That typical raw recruit of the Biglow Papers, 
" Mr. Birdofredom Sawin," was, we know, ceaselessly critical of 
the fuss and feathers of muster day. Real war when he had to 
face it, he declared, 

" ain't a mite like our October trainin", 
A chap could clear right out from there ef 't only looked like rainin', 
An' th' Cunnles, tu, could kiver up their shappoes with bandanners, 
An' send the insines skootin' to the bar-room with their banners 
(Fear o' gittin' on 'em spotted), an' a feller could cry quarter 
Ef he fired away his ramrod arter tu much rum an' water." 



i84 WARS AND RUMORS OF WAR. 

The "forced volunteers" of the West — men drafted to 
serve in the militia of a State in which they had neither 
time nor desire to serve — not unfrequently protested against 
discipline and proscription. So the militia system gradually 
fell into disrepute. In a land where caste and rank find 
but little footing and where social distinctions are of small 
account obedience in playing at war is but a grudging, a 
contemptuous or a good-humored concession. 

"See here, Brown," a militia offtcer is said to have called 
out to one of the privates (who when at home, was the pompous 
captain's employer), " I reckon I'll have to report you for dis- 
respect to your superior ofificer." 

" Report and be hanged ! " returned the private, with no 
little emphasis in his tone. " When we get home I reckon I'll 
have to discharge you." 

President Lincoln once stated that, previous to the Mexican 
war, so great a bore did militia trainings become to the people 
-of Illinois that they tried in every w^ay to put them down. 
Not being able to do this by repealing the militia laws they 
tried hard to burlesque them. And so, according to Mr. 
Lincoln's story, they elected one Gordon Adams, a village 
"bummer" and ne'er-do-well, as colonel of a Springfield regi- 
ment. The new colonel's uniform, contributed by his subordi- 
nates, was truly startling. One leg of his trousers was of one 
color and material, the other was in direct contrast. He wore 
a pasteboard cap about six feet long, looking much like an 
inverted ox-yoke. The shanks of his spurs were fully eight 
inches long and furnished with rowels as big as saucers. His 
sword was of pine wood and at least nine feet long. Among 
the regimental rules and regulations were incorporated certain 
absurd clauses, as for instance this : " No officer shall wear 



/; 







( AKU Al . .•-i:>'r I 111. Mll.l 1 lA. 
President l.inc.ln's story of " Colonel" Gordon Adams 



IVA/dS AND RUMORS OF WAR. 187 

more than twenty pounds of codfish for epaulets, nor more than 
thirty yards of Bologna sausage for a sash," Upon the regi- 
mental banner was borne aloft these words : " We'll fio;ht till 
we run and run till we die." The appearance of " Colonel " 
Adams according to Mr. Lincoln's narrative ended militia 
training in Springfield. It was killed by caricature! 

A certain Indiana major, filled w^ith an importance of the 
pomp and circumstance of mimic war as embodied in " general 
training" day and his own ability to lead was once elected to com- 
mand in a Wayne County regiment. He was not an imposing 
figure. He had, so the record declares, " like Julius Caesar, a 
weak body but the military ambition of a Charles the Twelfth.'' 
What he lacked in stature he sought to make up in uniform. 
The muster day arrived. The adjutant spurred from the head- 
quarters and with a loud voice issued his orders : " Officers, to 
your places. Marshal your men into companies. Separate 
the barefooted from those wearing shoes or moccasins ; place 
the guns, sticks and corn-stalks in separate platoons, and form 
in line to receive the major! " 

The line was formed and then, into the field, amid the 
clash of music, dashed the major and his aids. The little 
officer was almost lost in his gorgeous uniform. He wore a 
blue coat, covered with gold lace and big gilt buttons; upon 
his head was a chapeau, copied after Jackson's at the Horse 
Shoe fight, above which towered a red plume tipped with white. 
Great epaulets weighed down his narrow^ shoulders ; his sword- 
scabbard reached to his feet ; his legs were cased in Suwarrow 
boots that over-topped his pistol-stuffed holster and were graced 
with gilt spurs fully a foot long. Facing the waiting regiment 
the little major reined in his rearing horse, rose in his stirrups 
and shouted bravely : " Attention, the whole ! " 



i88 IVAJ^S AND RUMORS OF WAR. 

But, alas! his voice was weak. It broke on the "Atten- 
tion!" It rose into a fifelike squeak on "the whole." And 
just then from the extreme end of the regimental line came 
piping back an exact imitation of the major's squeak : " Chillun ! 
Come out 'er the swamp. You'll get snake-bit ! " 

Down the line dashed the enraged major. " Who dares 
insult me } " he demanded with fury in his eyes. And for 
reply there came all along the line the same mocking squeak: 
" Snake-bit ; snake-bit ; you'll get snake-bit ! " 

Mortified and angered beyoi:d endurance the poor little 
major's assumption of pomp and ceremony fell to dust and 
ashes. He dashed his chapeau from his head ; he flung his 
sword to the ground ; he tore his commission to pieces and 
resigned his ofifice on the spot. There was no recovery from 
so open a farce and the last militia muster had been held in 
the White Water country. 

On a certain " trainin' " day in New Hampshire a fuss-and- 
feathers captain ordered the double-quick. Away dashed the 
command but presently the captain, throwing a glance over his 
shoulder to note the effect of the maneuver was thunder- 
struck to find himself running alone. Going back to hunt up 
his missing company he found them, over the fence — chasing 
chickens ! 

Down in Virginia the captain of a militia company fell into 
hot dispute with his adjutant on training day. The whole 
parade was demoralized. Just as the war of words rose hottest 
a three-hundred pound hog, worried by the dogs, dashed across 
the parade ground and darting between the legs of the angry 
captain sent him sprawling to the ground. W^ith shrieks of 
laughter and loud hand-clapping soldiers and citizens applauded 
the overthrow. But springing to his feet the doughty captain 



WARS AND RUMORS OF JIAR. 189 

tore off his military coat, with all its entangling straps and 
belts, flung aside his sword and rolling up his shirt sleeves, 
shouted out in a fur}-: "Come on, you! I'll lick the whole 
company!" The tall file leader who stood nearest him, " bent 
like a willow-wand " in the brawny captain's grasp. Such valor 
was not to be disputed. Awed by their captain's physical 
powers more than by his " panoply of war " the company was 
re-formed and the mutiny was quelled. 

But if the militia in those "piping times of peace " was a 
crude, unorganized and graceless sort of body — a very emphasis, 
in fact, of the unwarlike character of the American people when 
nothing urges them to conflict — the eight thousand soldiers 
who made up the slender regular army were carefully drilled 
and thoroughly organKed. Hampered by many restrictions 
and enwrapped in much departmental red tape, it was yet 
officered by men who, learning a lesson from the failures of 
181 2, resolved never again to permit the army of the United 
States to be a stumbling block and a reproach. 

Gallant officers and rigid disciplinarians, such men as Brown, 
Macomb and Scott, were generals of the army between the 
years 18 15 and •1846. Their vigor, their energy and their de- 
termination to give to the service strength and standing, put 
into soldierly training the little force at whose head in turn 
they stood, and educated men and officers alike to be ready for 
efficient service in the two years' war that was fast drawing near. 



CHAPTER IX. 



OVER THE MEXICAN BORDER. 



EXICO — land of sunlight 
and of shadow, of peon 
and planter, of simplicity 
and superstition, of cour- 
tesy and cupidity, of lazy 
manners and of flaming 
passions — what spirit of 
evil could have induced a 
powerful northern nation 
to seek the humbling and 
the spoiling of so pictur- 
esque and yet so ambi- 
tious, so distracted and 
yet so devoted, so patri- 
otic and yet so partisan 
a sister republic? Fired 
by the example of the 

Northern colonies in their -revolt against English tryanny the 

land of the Aztecs had in 1815 declared itself independent and 

in 1 82 1 had thrown off the yoke of Spain. 

The republic of Mexico ! Surely here was an effort toward 

progress and freedom worthy to be fostered and upheld by that 

I go 




'fS^' 



OVER THE MEXICAN BORDER. 191 

great people whose success had given it being. What if it was 
, torn by faction and jealousies, a hot-bed of revolutions and of 
unfulfilled opportunities ? Ought it not to have been all the 
more a land to be befriended by a people who had conquered 
circumstances and obtained success? And yet in 1846 the 
northern eagles swooped down upon the southern doves and 
dyed the tricolored banner of Mexico in the blood of her 
bravest and her best. 

It is not the province of this volume to enter into the 
causes of those various wars in which the American soldier has 
played his part. But it must be admitted that no conflict in 
which the republic of the United States had been one of the 
principals was ever more unnecessary, heartless or unjust. A 
little cool judgment on the part of our national leaders, a little 
friendly concession toward a weaker neighbor, a determined 
effort toward that arbitration which to-day is the great pacificator 
of the world — and the willful waste of blood and treasure, the 
shame and taint of our war against Mexico might never have 
sullied the name of the United States. 

A war conceived in the interests of slavery, advocated 
as a political necessity and precipitated by the unwarranted 
occupation of a strip of foreign, or at least of neutral ground 
— such was the war with Mexico! No wonder our justice- 
loving Northern poet cried out in wrath 

" Where's now the flag of that old war ? 

Where flows its stripe ? Where burns its star? 

Bear witness, Palo Alto's clay, 

Dark vale of Palms, red Monterey ; 

Where Mexic freedom, young and weak, 

Fleshes the northern eagle's beak ; 

Symbol of terror and despair, 

Of chains and slaves, go seek it there ! " 



192 



OVER THE MEXICAN BORDER. 



And yet so incongruous is fate, so unreasoning is heroism, 
the very war that should have been distasteful to freemen — a 
war in behalf of oppression, offensive and not defensive, aggres- 
sive and not resistant, wrong and not right — this was the one 
war of all others, up to that stage of American history, most 
replete with daring, heroism and resistless successes. Fought, 
always, against fearful odds, in a strange land and in an 
unfriendly climate, from first to last the war was full of triumph 
for the stars and stripes. The march of the American soldiers 
across the Mexican borders and into the old Aztec capital was 
but one continuous series of victories. 

The nation was ready for war. Schooled by the imbecilities 
and reverses of 181 2 to an appreciation of military needs the 
regular army of the United States, as has already been said, 
though small in numbers was admirablv drilled and yet more 
admirably officered. The military academy at West Point, 
founded by act of Congress in 1802, had been reorganized in 
18 1 2 and placed upon such a basis of excellence and effort that 
its orraduates left it soldiers in trainingr as well as in theory. 

The men who led and who fought in the ranks of the 
United States army in 1S46 and 1847, were men indeed. — 
picked from the fighting stock of a nation which, notwithstand- 
ing the farces of muster days and the empty pomp of "general 
training," had still at base the valor, the endurance and the 
pluck that was the heritage of that time that tried men's souls 
threescore years before — the outcome of those historic days 
when men rallied for the right and laid down their lives for 
Liberty. 

Professor Soley, carefully studying the details of the Mexican 
war, asserts that "the skill and daring of the officers, and the 
discipline, endurance and courage of the men during the war 



OVER THE MEXICAN BORDER. 193 

with Mexico, were as noticeable as was the absence of these 
qualities during the War of 181 2." Here was no leaderless 
war. The names of Taylor and of Scott, of Worth and Wool, 
of Quitman and Kearney, of McKenzie and Shields belonged 
alike to leaders and to soldiers and, in the lack of competent 
Mexican generals, afford one reason for the unvarying suc- 
cesses of the American arms. 

The determined efforts of Texas (largely settled by Ameri- 
cans) to free itself from the Mexic-Spanish yoke, the heroic 
stand at the Alamo — that "Thermopylae of America" — the 
dreary tragedy of Goliad, the valorous and triumphant conflict 
at San Jacinto lost the Lone Star republic to Mexico, brought 
her at last into the confederation of the United States and 
aroused the world to a fresh sympathy with brave men nerved 
to heroic endeavor by a great desire. What man with fighting 
blood in his veins or the inspiration of courage in his heart 
would not be stirred to admiration by the heroism of Travis 
and his brave two hundred and fifty at the Alamo and by the 
desperate valor of San Houston's eight hundred at San 
Jacinto ? Valor begets enthusiasm, and when at last war against 
Mexico was declared there was but little reasoning among those 
who saw, in the fight over a new empire, opportunity for great 
deeds and martial experiences. To him who longed to shoulder 
a musket or swing a saber the question as to right or wrong 
counted for but little. The invasion of Mexico might be " a 
political necessity," the contest might be only a " war of pre- 
text " — both invasion and contest afforded, at least, a pretext 
for valorous deeds, a necessity for sturdy fighters ahd, to the 
soldiers, these were as all in all. 

So off to the wars they marched — regulars and volunteers 
alike, all filled with a desire for action, all swayed with the hope 



194 OVER THE MEXICAN BORDER. 

of glory. Their general was that Zachary Taylor whose army 
nickname of " Old Rough and Ready " sufficiently indicates 
his character. Rough indeed he was when warlike necessities 
called for vigorous actions ; and ready, too, the record shows 
him to have been whether responding to the government's call 
for the immediate occupation of the disputed territory or storm- 
ing against the host of foeman below the rocky heights that 
frowned on Angostura. 

Seizing the disputed stretch of territory that lay, two 
hundred miles in width, along the eastern bank of the Rio 
Grande, General Taylor with his Army of Occupation, twenty- 
five hundred strong, rendezvoused at Point Isabel not far from 
the mouth of the Great River. His force comprised one 
thousand reQ:ula.i*s and less than fifteen hundred volunteers 
drawn from the southwestern States. It consisted of one 
regiment of cavalry ("dragoons"), four companies of light 
artillery, five regiments of infantry and one regiment of artil- 
lery acting as infantry. Over the camp at Point Isabel floated 
the American flag and this was deemed by the Mexicans alike 
an insult and an invitation to war. And war began. 

The Mexican bombardment of Fort Brown, a hastily con- 
structed fortification thrown up by the Americans on the banks 
of the river opposite Matomoras, was the signal for battle. 
The battle followed speedily. It was a double engagement 
fought with all the faith that comes from superiority of numbers 
by the over-confident Mexicans and with all the valor of des- 
peration by the little American army. Along the easterly 
side of the Rio Grande North and South met in conflict. 
In this double fight — the battles of Palo Alto and Resaca 
de la Palma, in both of which the Mexican array of over six 
thousand men outnumbered the Americans almost three to 



OVER THE MEXICAN BORDER. 195 

one — the courage of the northern army and the abiHty of its 
leader stood the test of battle and gave the key-note to this 
epic of war. A five hours' fight at Palo Alto — the "tall 
trees" — on the eighth of May gave the victory to the North- 
ern arms. On the ninth the yet fiercer fight at Resaca de la 
Palma sent the Mexicans flying across the river in full retreat 
and the first victory was won. The Mexican contempt for 
their Northern antagonists was changed to consternation. 
With one seventh of their number wounded or prisoners, the 
Mexican soldiers fled before the northern bayonet, enraged 
yet defeated and as one American officer has testified " throw- 
ing their muskets at our men in the spirit of desperation, 
swearing that they were devils incarnate." It was a sad revela- 
tion to the too-confident Mexicans. The victory they so 
unquestioningly expected was but bitter defeat. The wail of 
disaster lives in the lines of one of their native poets: 

" Dark is Palo Alto's story, 

Sad Resaca Pal ma's rout ; 
On those fatal fields so gory 

Many a gallant life went out. 

"On they came, those Northern horsemen, 

On like eagles through the sun ; 
Followed then the Northern bayonet, 

And the field was lost and won." 

The field indeed was lost and won. General Taylor crossed 
the Rio Grande. The Army of Occupation became the Army 
of Invasion. The effect of these battles on the American peo- 
ple was like an elixir. It fired them to ambitious and determined 
action. The president issued a call for fifty thousand volun- 
teers. Ten times that number responded. The Government 
could not handle the host and only the number called for was 



196 OVER THE MEXICAN BORDER. 

sent south. It was divided into tliree sections — the Army of 
Occupation, the Army of the Center and the Army of the 
West, Sixty-five hundred men shouldered their flint-locks and 
at once the forward march was taken for this modern conquest 
of Mexico. 

It is characteristic of human nature to honor heroism and 
to emphasize, in the story of a successful war, not the blood but 
the bravery that it displays. As the years go by and the real 
horrors of conflict and carnage are weakened by remoteness so 
are the valorous deeds intensified and made to appear gleaming 
and glorious. 

The triumphal march on Mexico made by the American 
soldiers takes to itself as we now look back upon it all the 
glitter and romance of the historic deeds of those old conqiiis- 
tadorcs of Spain who, amid these same hills and valleys, turned 
a race of progressive barbarians into a nation of slaves. Alva- 
rado's mighty leap across the broken causeway, Sandoval's 
dashing charge up the bloody stairway of the Aztec temple and 
Olid's fiery valor at Otumba are recalled by May's terrific 
charge upon the Mexican batteries at Resaca de la Pal ma, by 
Smith's furious onset at Contreras and by Quitman's stubborn 
defense of the San Belen gate. 

And as we are apt, in the glamour of Spanish victory, to lose 
sisht of the bravery of those heroic ^ tzins of the Aztec — Cacama 
and Guatamo — so we place in our records of this modern con- 
quest but scant mention of that brave Mexican color-sergeant 
who on the stricken field of Palo Alto left the fight, the last 
of his regiment, wrapped in the folds of the flag he had so 
valiantly defended — the tattered banner of the Tampico Vete- 
rans; we find but brief reference to that gallant old Revolu- 
tionarv leader Bravo and his young cadets of the Mexican 



OVER THE MEXICAN BORDER. 197 

military academy who held the hill of Chapultepec against the 
terrible char^re of their Northern foeman. It is time for us to 
oive up the old fable that the Mexicans who withstood our 
arms were only greasers and cowards. It is proper for us to 
bear in mind that in the Mexican calendar Cherubusco and 
Chapultepec are celebrated as victories instead of defeats — the 
birthdays of patriotism and valor. That these patriots were foe- 
men worthy of our steel full many a northern soldier on those 
bloody fields learned to his cost. 

'' The Mexican army of that day," says General Grant, " was 
hardly an organization. The private soldier was poorly clothed, 
worse fed and seldom paid ; yet I have seen as brave stands made 
by some of these men as I have ever seen made by soldiers." 

Honoring those whose names gave emphasis to victory we 
read the record of this unnecessary but fascinating war with no 
little enthusiasm. Our caps are flung aloft at each recurring 
victory and we almost resent with indignation the grumbling 
criticisms of that same grumbling volunteer of the " Biglow 
Papers " who, after the war was over, declared with equally bad 
orace and bad orammar : 

o o 

" But somehow, wen we'd fit an' licked, I oilers found the thanks 

Gut kin' o' lodged afore they come ez low down ez the ranks ; 

The Gin'rals gut the biggest sheer, the Gunnels next, an' so on, — 

We never gut a blasted might o' glory ez I know on ; 

An' s'pose we hed, I wonder how you 're goin" to contrive its 

Division so's to give a piece to twenty thousand privits ; 

Ef you should multiply by ten the portion o' the brav'st one, 

Vou wouldn't git mor'n half enough to speak of on a grave-stun ; 

We git the licks — we're jest the grist thet's put into War's hoppers ; 

Leftenants is the lowest grade thet helps pick up the coppers. 

It may suit folks thet go agin a body with a soul in 't ; 

An' ain't contented with a hide without a bagnet hole in 't ; 

But glory is a kin' o' thing /sha'n't pursue no furder, 

Coz thet's the off'cers parquisite, — yourn's on'y jest the murder." 



1 98 OVER THE MEXICAN BORDER. 

Looked at from the standpoint of right the war against 
Mexico was unwarranted, unnecessary and inexcusable ; re- 
garded from the standpoint of action it was thrilHng, inspiring 
and glorious. Inch by inch through a hostile country, against 
a myriad odds, with an enemy outnumbering it many times 
over, the American army pushed on from assault to assault and 
from victory to victory until the stars and stripes waved in 
triumph above the halls of the Montezumas, The valor at 
Palo Alto, the doQ:Q:ed determination at Resaca de la Palma 
formed but the proem to this epic of war. The only time in 
its history that the United States invaded a foreign country 
the story of that invasion is one unbroken record of daring and 
success. 

The bloody streets of Monterey, the smoked-filled defiles 
of Buena Vista, the echoing batteries of Vera Cruz, the 
stricken tower of Cerro Gordo, the razored lava beds of Con- 
treras, the fated fortress of Cherubusco, the shattered structure 
of Molino Del Rey, the storied height of Chapultepec, the bat- 
tered gates of Mexico alike bore terrible evidence of the stub- 
bornness and bravery, the valor and the resistless sweep of that 
little army of Northern invaders who, at every step, forced 
victory out of desperate chances and sowed the seeds of an 
international enmity that not forty years of peace have yet 
removed. The war with Mexico retrieved the inbecilities of 
1S12 and raised the name of the American soldier to a place 
of glory and honor that found its after fruits in the desperate 
life struggle of the nation where valor met valor, as brother 
grappled with brother on Virginian battle-fields and on the 
banks of the mighty Mississippi. 

It was a war to make the philanthropist shudder and the 
soldier loudly huzza. Whittier's glimpse of the terrible battle 



OVER THE MEXICAN BORDER. i99 

of Buena Vista is not all romance and poetry ; it is a picture 
of passion photographed by philanthropy : 

^ " Look forth once more, Ximena ! ' Ah ! the smoke has rolled away ; 

And I see the Northern rifles gleaming down the ranks of gray. 
Hark ! that sudden blast of bugles ! there the troop of Minon wheels ; 
There the Northern horses thunder, with the cannon at their heels. 

" ' |esu, pity ! how it thickens ! now retreat and now advance ! 
Right against the blazing cannons shivers Puebla's charging lance! 
Down they go, the brave young riders ; horse and foot together fall ; 
Like a ploughshare in the fallow, through them ploughs the Northern ball.' 

" J-ook forth once more, Ximena ! ' Like a cloud before the wind 
Rolls the battle down the mountains, leaving blood and death behind; 
.■\h ! they plead in vain for mercy ; in the dust the wounded strive ; 
Hide your faces, holy angels ! O thou Christ of God, forgive ! ' 

" Sink, O Night, among thy mountains, let the cool gray shadows fall ; 
Dying brothers, fighting demons, drop thy curtam over all ! 
Through the thickening winter twilight, wide apart the battle rolled. 
In its sheath the saber rested, and the cannon's lips grew cold. 

" Not wholly lost, O Father ! is this evil world of ours ; 
Upward, through its blood and ashes, spring afresh the Eden flowers; 
From its smoking hell of battle, Love and Pity send their prayer, 
And still thy white winged angels hover dimly in our air ! " 

There are triumphs of brain quite as marvelous as those of 
muscle ; there are victories of strategy more complete than those 
of sword and bayonet. Such was Taylor's masterly retreat 
from Agua Nueva by which v.'as secured the wonderful victory 
of Buena Vista ; such, too, was that shrewd change of base by 
which Scott avoided the trap set for him by the wily Santa 
Anna and opened the way for his almost unresisted march upon 
the Mexican capital. 

And, as typical of those displays of valor in which general- 
ship overcame numbers and brute force yielded to discipline, 



2 00 OVER THE MEXICAN BORDER. 

none of the engagements of the war stand out with greater 
distinctness than does the victory at Buena Vista and that des- 
perate fight which, waged near the convent at Cherubusco, won 
the way to Mexico. 

In both engagements the Mexicans outnumbered the 
Americans ahnost four to one; but Buena Vista was fought 
ahiiost under the shadows of that uncertainty as to the real 
fighting-quahties of Mexico's legions and the real persistence of 
America's bayonets which not even the valor of Palo Alto and 
Resaca de la Palma nor all the bloody memories of the deter- 
mined fury at Monterey could yet quite remove; Cherubusco 
was almost the last of that unbroken series of victories that 
had, by that time, made America over-confident and Mexico 
despondent. 

Pressing through the narrow defiles of those high Sierras 
that fiank the open table-lands of Northern Mexico came, rank 
after rank, on the twent3'-second of February, 1847, the'army of 
Santa Anna, twenty thousand strong. Encamped upon a cir- 
cumscribed plateau, that commanded the approaches upon every 
side, the little force of General Taylor, a scant five thousand 
men, awaited the onset of the foe. The army of the stout old 
American commander had been shorn of half its fighting 
strength, taken for the reinforcement of Scott's new army that 
was to march upon Mexico from the sea. This demand had 
withdrawn from Taylor's army, already small enough for oper- 
ations in a hostile country, nearly all of the regulars, Worth's 
volunteers and Quitman's and Twiggs' commands. Enraged at 
the defeats in the north the Mexicans, in overwhelming num- 
bers, had gathered under the lead of their wariest and most 
successful general to fall upon and utterly crush out this little 
remnant of northern invasion that had retreated from Agua 



^ 





"r).>wn 
P.lood is 



THK liATl 1,1. ul \\\ l-.NA AIM A. 

tlic hills of Angostura still the storm of battle rolls; 
flowing, Mien are dying ; God have mercy on their souls 



^^\ 



OVER THE MEXICAN BORDER. 203 

Nueva and between whom and destruction there only waited 
the merciless order of the Mexican leader to slay and spare not. 
The situation was desperate indeed, 

" You are surrounded by twenty thousand men," came the 
summons of Santa Anna to Taylor. " You cannot avoid being 
cut to pieces with your troops. Surrender at once and you 
shall be treated with that consideration that belono^s to the 
Mexican character." 

And back went the brief but plucky reply of " Old Rough 
and Ready : " "I decline to accede to your request." 

Then Ampudia's light infantry rushed to the attack. The 
battle was joined: 

" Like the fierce northern hurricane 

That swee]3S his great plateau, 

Flushed with the triumph yet to gain 

Came down the serried foe. 

Who heard the thunder of the fray 

Break o'er the field beneath 

Knew well the watchword of that day 

Was Victory or Death ! "' 

But Ampudia's men fire wildly. The American riflemen 
are sure and steady of aim. And when the sun sank behind 
the overhanging hills the Americans still hold with stubborn 
determination the key to their position — La Angostura, "The 
Narrows," that pass of scanty width just south of the farm 
house of Buena Vista, through which the main portion of 
Santa Anna's army must push their way if they hope to gain 
the expected victory. And so night fell upon the field. 

But the sun rose on a renewed struggle. Strongly rein- 
forced, Ampudia's men drive in the American pickets. From 
five different positions the Mexicans press to the attack. 



204 OVER THE MEXICAN BORDER. 

Destruction seems inevitable. The Indiana troops turn in 
flight, O'Brien's battery, deprived of its support, is overwhelmed 
and captured by the Mexican host it has so valiantly held at 
bay. The American left is turned. Fleeing soldiers rush 
wildly into Buena Vista crying that the day is lost. 

But still the Americans hold the narrow pass. Charge as 
they will the men of Villamie's column cannot dislodge the 
little American battery that commands the roadway through 
the defile of Angostura. Victory trembles in the balance. 
Suddenly loud cheers ring out at Buena Vista and in a column 
of dust, spurring to the aid of his boys at bay in the Narrows, 
Old Rough and Ready comes riding from Saltillo where he has 
been arranging for the protection of his rear-guard. 

"Never mind Villamie," he cried; "he's done for. Wash- 
ington can hold the pass. Send the Mississippi riflemen to the 
left. Bring up the Third Indiana. Let Sherman's battery 
support them. May, ride with your dragoons to the upper 
plateau. Ampudia must be checked !" 

And Ampudia was checked. The Mexican lancers, fifteen 
hundred strong, the special pride of Santa Anna, the flower of 
Mexico's armv, 20 down like srrain beneath the fire of the 
northern riflemen. The left is strengthened. The Mexicans, 
blind to the real key to the field, give over their assault on the 
Narrows. With a last mighty clash of arms the battle centers 
about the little hamlet of Buena Vista and almost before they 
know it the field is won. 

The men of Kentucky and Arkansas bear back Ampudia's 
dashing cavalry. Forced backward, step by step, in a desperate 
hand-to-hand fight on horseback, go Torrejon and his dragoons. 
The commands of Ampudia and Pacheco, overwhelming in 
numbers are hemmed in between the narrow defiles and 



OVER THE MEXICAN BORDER. 205 

pounded at by three American batteries. Six thousand Mexi- 
cans are almost caught in a trap of their own making when a 
white flas: flutters from the Mexican lines and Santa Anna 
coolly demands : " What does General Taylor want ? " 

The batteries cease firing, the troops rest for an armistice 
and the hemmed-in Mexicans escape from their trap. This 
at all events, is just what the wily Santa Anna wants; and 
when this is effected, clash ! go his sabers ; bang ! go his 
guns again. 

But not saber clash nor bang of gun can save the day for 
Mexico. Down in the dust before the pitiless grape and 
canister of O'Brien's batteries go Villamie's reserves; back to 
the hills flies the renegade brigade of San Patricio ; Ampudia's 
men are in full retreat. Santa Anna himself, spent with this 
fruitless hurling of his masses against such undaunted men, 
gives up the battle with the sun. Night falls again upon 
Angostura and Buena Vista and, before morning dawns, the 
crippled Mexican army melt away and the stubborn fight of 
that twenty-third of February becomes the historic victory of 
Buena Vista — really the decisive battle of the war. Twenty- 
five hundred in killed and wounded, with four thousand mis- 
sing and deserters is what Mexico paid for that dismal defeat; 
two hundred and sixty-four in killed, four hundred and fifty in 
wounded is the cost of America's triumph : 

" Full many a norther's breath has swept 

O'er Angostura's plain, 
And long the pitying sky has wept 

Above the mouldered slain. 
The raven's scream or eagle's flight, 

Or shepherd's pensive lay, 
Alone now wakes each solemn height 

That frowned on that dread fray." 



2o6 OVER THE MEXICAN BORDER. 

Buena Vista was the key-note of victory in the north ; in 
somewhat different fashion, but as surely, the pivotal battle in 
the south was the furious fight of Cherubusco. Zachary 
Taylor had broken the power of Mexico ; now to complete 
the conquest came, with a well-disciplined force of ten thousand 
Americans — regulars, volunteers and war-ships* — Winfield 
Scott, the victor of Lundy's Lane, the commander-in-chief 
of the armies of the United States. 

It was the spring of 1847. On the twenty-third of March 
Vera Cruz, the chief seaport of the Southern Republic, fell 
before the destructive cannonade of the American batteries. 
On the eighteenth of April Twiggs' brigade carried by storm 
the entrenchments on the bristling heights of Cerro Gordo; the 
men of Shields' and Riley's commands charged the fort and 
batteries; Santa Anna's fifteen thousand fled for their lives 
toward the capital, and the famous wooden leg of their artful 
but intrepid commander was left on the field as a reminder of 
his hasty flight. 

By August the soldiers of Scott had climbed the Sierras 
from whose crest, as had Cortez and his men three centuries 
before, they looked down into the lovely Valley of Mexico. 
From Pueblo to the city of Mexico, the National Road, which 
was the main approach to the capital, was defended by every 
device known to a desperate people and an army of over thirty 
thousand men had rallied to Santa Anna's call to repel the 
northern invasion. 

But, nothing daunted, Scott advanced to Ayatta and 
looking off at the capital city only fifteen miles distant awaited 
the report of his engineers. " The Mexicans outnumber us 

* General Scott's invading force comprised four regiments of artillery, eight of infantry, one of mounted 
riflemen, and detachments of dragoons — " the then standing army of the United States; " added to these regulars were 
eight volunteer regiments of infantry and one of cavalry. 



OVER THE MEXICAN BORDER. 207 

four to one," they said. " Yonder fortress of El Penon, 
between the lakes, commands the road. Its capture will cost 
you fully a third of your army." 

" Is there no other approach to the city } " Scott inquired. 

" None but the mule-path around Lake Chalco, to the 
south, and over the lava beds," was the reply. 

" Can we get our cannon and wagons over the mule-path } " 
the general asked. 

" Only by hard work," said the engineers. 

" Then make it passable," Scott commanded. " We'll go 
by the mule-path. The best way to march on an enemy is by 
the way he least expects you to take." 

The road was "fixed"; the detour around the lakes was 
made; and by the mule-path and over the ragged lava beds 
Scott's ten thousand eluded the entrenched enemy and 
approached their capital. The city of Mexico, beautiful for 
situation, the historic metropolis of Montezuma's fabled king- 
dom, was, at the time of Scott's advance, inhabited by one hun- 
dred and fifty thousand people and defended by thirty-five 
thousand soldiers. 

At the hill of Contreras, in the valley beyond the lava 
beds, forty-five hundred Americans burst like a storm upon 
Valencia's seven thousand and in an action of seventeen 
minutes sent them flying toward Cherubusco with a loss of 
seven hundred dead, and nine hundred prisoners. 

Around the fortified convent of San Pablo de Cherubusco 
Santa Anna had concentrated an army of thirty thousand men. 
Scott's available force was scarcely more than eight thousand, 
but it was a determined and jubilant eight thousand, flushed 
with victory and confident of success. 

The convent-castle bristled with cannon. The Mexican 



2o8 OVER THE MEXICAN BORDER. 

guns commanded every approach. The Mexican army was 
in position, determined now to strike one last and overwhehn- 
ing blow for victory against the northern invaders. 

But no such obstacles as fortress, guns or masses of men 
can stay the march of the Americans. Right on they push. 
Through the maguey groves, through the cornfields and 
veoetable orardens, throuQ-h the ambuscade of dense and over- 
hangfino- foliao^e their resistless march ooes on. On front and 
flank they fall remorselessly, while the Third Infantry, with a 
furious charge, dash at the embattled convent, breached by 
Taylor's battery, and carry it by storm. Useless to contend 
against such merciless fighters as these, O, Mexican patriots! 
Yet fight they do and nobly, though to little purpose. 
Straight against those wavering ranks ride Kearney's cavalry- 
men, down upon them charge Shields and Pierce, across the 
ditches, careless of shot and shell, spring Worth's infantrymen. 
The Mexicans give way, they turn to flight and streaming 
along the causeway, " in one wild, panic-stricken mass " they 
seek the uncertain security of the city's walls while the victori- 
ous riders of Harney's cavalry-troop pursue them even to the 
very gate of their imperiled capital. 

On that twentieth of August the fate of Mexico was decided. 
Ten thousand Mexicans were lost to the Republic as killed, 
wounded or prisoners ; of the Americans, less than a thousand 
fell. Looked at as a stirring episode of war it was one of 
the most wonderful and complete victories ever attained on 
American soil. American pluck and American discipline had 
overcome unorganized and ill-led bravery in the mass. 

Less than a month later, despite the wily ways and des- 
perate treachery of Santa Anna, and after the terrible fights at 
Molino del Rey, upon the storied hill of Chapultepec and at 



OVER 2WE MEXICAN BORDER. 209 

the gates of the city, the capital fell. Scott's little army of 
less than seven thousand men marched into the fallen town and 
Mexico lay at the feet of her conquerors. The war was over. 

It was a war brilliant in execution, dramatic in action, mar- 
velous in success. It was the most picturesque contest waged 
on American soil since the days of the conquistadores ; it 
was crowded with excitement, prolific of peril, tingling with 
achievement. 

Politically the war against Mexico was a grave mistake. 
Waored for as^orandizement and conauest ao;ainst a weaker and 
less intelligent neighbor it was a blot on American justice, a 
stain on American honor. The new territory that it added to 
the United States and which might have been peacefully pur- 
chased for twenty-five millions of dollars cost the North Ameri- 
can Republic one hundred and thirty millions of dollars and 
twenty thousand lives. Its very success brought about section- 
alism and bickering and its final fruits were the war between 
the States. It was, so far as the American people were con- 
cerned, a contest that must ever recall the query of little Peter- 
kin and the reply of old Casper in Southey's well-known ballad: 

" ' And everybody praised the Duke 

Who this great fight did win.' 

' Ikit what good came of it at last?' 

Quoth little Peterkin. 

' Why, that I cannot tell,' said he, 

' But 'twas a famous victory.' " 

But how few of us regard the utilitarian side of a question 
when our ears are filled with the sound of martial music, our 
eyes fixed on the doing of martial deeds. Politically the war 
against Mexico was a grave mistake ; popularly it was a mighty 



2 10 OVER THE MEXICAN BORDER. 

success. Against the greatest odds the abihty of the American 
soldier had been tested and his valor proven to all. It trained 
the citizen to warfare and afforded a school of instruction from 
which graduated those whose names in the greater conflict of 
twenty years after became as household words in the North and 
South. 

" The Mexican war," says Professor Soley, " showed few 
mistakes, because the officers were well trained, and as a neces- 
sary consequence the troops were in a short time well trained 
also. The War of 1812 on the American side was a war of ama- 
teurs ; that with Mexico was a war of professional soldiers and 
strategists." 

It was military skill as well as personal valor that forced 
the fighting at Palo Alto, and held the key to the position at 
Buena Vista ; that made Doniphan's victorious march into 
Chihuahua — "as arduous and exacting of courage and persist- 
ency as Hannibal's crossing the Appenines ;" that circumvented 
a wily foeman by the detour through the lava beds about 
Lake Chalco and directed the assault up the rocky sides of 
Chapultepec. The leaders in the Mexican war were indeed 
no amateurs. 

And, despite the grumbling of such suppositious soldiers as 
Mr. Lowell's " Birdofredum Sawin " there was s^lorv both for 
general and private from the banks of the Rio Grande and the 
fortresses of Vera Cruz to the passes of the Sierras and the 
gates of Mexico. In every battle was the prowess of the Amer- 
ican soldier displayed. It was no holiday war — no victory over 
cowards and cravens. The Americans accomplished a task in 
their modern conquest of Mexico beset with greater difficulties 
than was that of Cortez and his companions. The foemen they 
encountered, so Mr. Ober declares, w^ere "active and intelligent, 



OVER THE MEXICAN BORDER. 2n 

equally well equipped and versed in the science of war with 
themselves ; the country throughout its length and breadth was 
alive with hatred of the invaders." Every battle was stub- 
bornly contested. " The Mexicans," says Mr. Ladd, " poured 
out their blood like water in the defense of their country's 
honor. But the courage and perseverance of the Americans 
were more than equal for their desperation and patriotism." 

Against Mexican bravery was pitted American valor. In 
every action the stars and stripes waved above gallant endeavor 
and dashing deed. Blake's intrepid reconnoissance in face of 
all the foe at Palo Alto ; May's marvelous charge at Resaca 
de la Palma; the stubborn courage of Doniphan's dauntless 
Missouri fighters at Sacramento; the exploits of " the Bloody 
First" at Monterey; O'Brien's plucky stand at Beuna Vista; 
Harney's fearless climb up the slope of Cerro Gordo ; Persifal 
Smith's gallant capture of the fortified camp of Contreras (con- 
sidered by General Scott one of the most brilliant feats in all 
the annals of war); the terrific charge of the Third Infantry at 
Cherubusco ; Mcintosh's desperate dash at Molino del Rey ; 
Howard's scaling of the walls of Chapultepec ; McKenzie's 
resistless rush through the San Cosme gate — these are but 
selected episodes of battle that had their counterparts in every 
engagement of the war and placed the daring of the American 
soldier on a par with the generalship and skill of the great 
leaders in the conflict — Taylor and Kearney, Scott and 
Worth and those other general officers whose names are insep- 
arably linked with the records of our war against Mexico. 

And those who fell ! Disease, more dread than lance thrust 
or saber stroke, than musket wound or crash of booming 
cannon, cut down five to one of those who fell in battle. There 
is no poetry in wasted bodies or ruined character; these find no 



212 OVER THE MEXICAN BORDER. 

blazoning line on roll of bravery or certificate of honor. Theirs 
is the record on the dark and repellent side of war. Only the 
heroic dead are honored. 

And above all those who fell in the fury and carnage of 
this expensive and unnecessary war the noblest monument 
reared by those who honored them was surely that stirring 
threnody of their comrade, the soldier-poet, Theodore O'Hara 
of Kentucky: 

" The muffled drum's sad roll has beat 

The soldiers last tattoo ! 
No more on life's parade shall meet 

That brave and fallen few. 
On Fame's eternal camping ground 

Their silent tents are spread 
And Glory guards with solemn round 

The Bivouac of the Dead. 

" No rumor of the foe's advance 

Now swells upon the wind ; 
No troubled thought at midnight haunts 

Of loved ones left behind ; 
No vision of the morrow's strife 

The warrior's dream alarms ; 
No braying horn, nor screaming fife 

At dawn shall call to arms, 

" The neighboring troop, the flashing blade. 

The bugle's stirring blast, 
The charge, the dreadful cannonade, 

The din and shout are past — 
Nor war's wild note, nor glory's peal. 

Shall thrill with fierce delight 
Those breasts that nevermoie may feel 

The rapture of the fight. 

"Sons of the dark and bloody ground 
Ye must not slumber there 
Where stranger steps and tongue resound 



OVER THE MEXICAN BORDER. 213 

Along the heedless air; 
Vour own proud land's heroic soil 

Should be your fitter grave , 
She claims from war its richest spoil 

The ashes of her brave. 



"Rest on, embalmed and sainted dead ! 
Dear as the blood ye gave ; 
No impious footsteps here shall tread 

The herbage of your grave. 
Nor shall your glory be forgot 

While Fame her record keeps 
Or Honor points the hallowed spot 
Where Valor proudly sleeps." 



CHAPTER X. 



HORSE, FOOT AND DRAGOON. 



.HE Mexican War was a practical school of 
the soldier. Its thorough but rapid turning 
of recruits into fighters, its forced marches, 
frequent engagements, hard service and dar- 
ing deeds — all in a hostile country and 
against heavy odds — tested the endurance 
as it tried the courage of men, while the 
enthusiasm of success strengthened the 
weak, inspired the timid and gave to every 
man upon whose pistol belt gleamed the 
northern eagle, the manner and appearance 
of the veteran soldier. 

The men of Doniphan's command, Mis- 
souri volunteers all, who marched two 
thousand miles overland to the invasion 
of Chihuahua, saw nine months of hard service before receiv- 
ing a dollar of pay. But as they stood on Sacramento Hill, 
twelve hundred and sixty weary men facing five thousand fresh 
and determined Mexicans, their leader rode from rank to rank. 
" I could see nothing," he says, " but the stern resolve to con- 
quer or to die. There was no trepidation and no pale faces." 
Half-rations, hard marches, no clothes and no pay had neither 

214 




HORSE, FOOT AND DRAGOON. 215 

conquered their determination nor dampened their valor. 
" They curse and praise their country in the same breath," 
said Colonel Doniphan; "but they fight for her all the time!" 

And the undaunted spirit that filled these overvv^orked 
Missouri volunteers and gave them victory at Brazito, Sacra- 
mento, and Chihuahua lived as well in the breasts of all — volun- 
teers and regulars alike — who made up the victorious armies of 
conquest and occupation in the Mexican War. 

To those who imagine that the soldiers of the Mexican 
War were furnished by the Southern States alone, the figures 
will tell a different story. Of the hundred thousand fig-htino- 
men who marched across the Mexican border, twenty-seven thou- 
sand were United States regulars ; Texas, naturally, as the sec- 
tion directly interested in the conflict, headed the roll of vol- 
unteers with eight thousand troops; Louisiana, as the nearest 
neighbor, came next with nearly eight thousand also ; but Illi- 
nois and Ohio contributed quite as many men as did Kentucky 
and Tennessee ; New York sent nearly twice as many as did 
Virginia; Massachusetts and South Carolina furnished an equal 
number; Pennsylvania sent more than Mississippi; Michigan 
more than North Carolina; New Jersey more than Florida; 
Indiana more than Georgia, Maryland and Arkansas combined. 
Despite the claim that it was " the Southerners' war " it was 
the Nation's war, in which men of the North and the South 
marched shoulder to shoulder and fought with equal bravery on 
bloody fields. 

The war was over. The volunteers returned to their 
homes. The fighting strength of the regulars, grown to over 
thirty thousand, was reduced to a peace footing of ten thou- 
sand. Once again the watchword of the nation was that of 
the good old Roman emperor: Aiqtianiniitas. 



2i6 HORSE, FOOT AND DRAGOON. 

If the war against Mexico, among the numerous practical 
results that it brought about in the more efficient development 
of the school of the soldier, created a strons^er feelins^ of comrad- 
ship and union among the officers and men of the regular army 
than had before existed, it also improved the condition and 
soldierly standing of the militia engaged therein and sent the 
volunteers back to their respective States more thoroughly 
soldiers than they had ever been before. 

A marked improvement in the State soldiery was every- 
where apparent and the fuss and farce of the old-time drill and 
muster-days gave place to something like soldierly bearing 
and real militarv oro-anization. There was still existino' in 
the tactics that directed the trainino- and evolutions of the 
regiments much that was cumbersome, old-fashioned and 
unnecessary. Hardee's Tactics had, indeed, superseded those 
prepared by General Scott and which were as involved and 
unwieldy as the flint-lock musket upon the use of which this 
old-time manual of arms was based. But not all the drilling 
was done by Hardee's tactics — "which was nothing more," 
declares General Grant, " than common-sense and the progress 
of the age applied to Scott's system" — until well on toward 
the opening of the Civil War. In 1855 Hardee's Tactics were 
adopted by the Government as the manual for West Point and 
in the regular army, but in many of the militia regiments the 
"halt" and "forward march" that preceded and followed every 
change in the order of march showed that the evolutions of 
those by-gone days of the flint-lock had not entirely lost their 
sway. 

The military academy at West Point, in the mid-years of 
the nineteenth century, was increasing in importance and 
acquiring for itself a wider and more kindly sentiment of 



HORSE, FOOT AND DRAGOON. 217 

popular respect than had been its due in the eadier stage 
of its existence. 

First suggested in 1783 by Colonel Pickering the quarter- 
master-general of the Revolutionary army, authorized by Con- 
gress in 1794 and established in 1802 with forty artillery cadets 
and ten engineers, it grew but slowly until the War of 181 2 
proved the incapacity and the lack of training among the officers 
of the army. From that date the school grew alike in numbers 
and in efficiency. And yet, despite its real usefulness, this 
" school for generals " was esteemed by the people at large as 
little better than an expensive toy that the Government would 
better do away with. In fact, in December, 1839, a bill was intro- 
duced into Congress looking to the abolishment of the military 
academy. Though this bill never passed the fact of its being in- 
troduced is an indication of that popular disapproval of the exist- 
ence of such a school in a peaceful nation which, in a ruder way, 
was illustrated by an anecdote that General Grant tells of his early 
career. Returninor after his Graduation to his home in Ohio, as 
big a man, in his own estimation as General Scott, the command- 
er-in-chief himself, and in all the glory of a new uniform his 
pride experienced a grievous fall through the " humor " of the 
dissipated stable man of the village tavern. Returning to his 
home one day young Grant, as he tells us, found this facetious 
stable-man " parading the streets of Bethel and attending to his 
duties in the stable, barefooted, but in a pair of sky-blue nankeen 
pantaloons — just the color of my uniform trousers — with a strip 
of white cotton sheeting sewed down the outside seams in imita- 
tion of mine." It is significant, as indicative of the popular 
estimation of "West Pointers" at that day that, as General 
Grant declares, " the joke was a huge one in the minds of many 
of the people and was much enjoyed by them." This incident 



2i8 HORSE, FOOT AND DRAGOON. 

of his " salad days " had its effect on all his after life and gave 
him, he says, a distaste for military uniforms from which he 
never recovered. 

This antagonism to "regular army" ways and methods 
often displayed itself in times of peace. There was, too, always 
existing the positive, if unspoken feud born of unnecessary con- 
tempt on one side and of equally unnecessary jealousy on the 
other between the regulars and the militia. Holding the rank 
of lieutenant in the regular army General Burnside, in 1855, 
was appointed by the State of Rhode Island major-general of 
the State militia. In this capacity he once ordered a court- 
martial for the trial of a commander of a Providence corps. 
This doughty leader, it seems, had refused to occupy the place 
in a certain Fourth of July procession to which the General 
had assigned him, alleging as the reason for his non-appearance 
that the day was rainy and that he did not wish to damage the 
new uniforms of his men. But when the court-martial for the 
trial of this disobedient officer had been ordered the governor 
of the State, as commander-in-chief, interfered and dissolved the 
court. General Burnside promptly resigned his commission as 
major-general of the State militia whereupon the State Legisla- 
ture as a rebuke to the " arrogance " of a regular army officer 
elected as his successor the very officer who was to have been 
tried for disobedience to orders. Far too often have the 
exigencies and expediences of politics interfered with military 
discipline and success. 

There are always those in every community who, in time of 
peace are ready to prepare for war. And this is well. States- 
men may see the value and proclaim the necessity of an organ- 
ized militia. "The United States," wrote Washington in 1793, 
" ought not to indulge a persuasion that, contrary to the order 



HORSE, FOOT AND DRAGOON. 219 

of human events, they will forever keep at a distance those 
painful appeals to arms with which the history of every other 
nation abounds. . . . The devising and establishing of a 
well-regulated militia would be a genuine source of legislative 
honor and a perfect title to public gratitude." " As the great- 
est danger to liberty," said Franklin, " is from large standing 
armies, it is best to prevent them by an effectual provision for 
a o;ood militia." " Whenever the militia comes to an end or is 
despised and neglected," wrote John Adams in 1823, " I shall 
consider this Union dissolved and the liberties of North 
America lost forever. National defense is one of the cardinal 
duties of a statesman." 

But statesmen, as a rule, are not the real organizers of the 
fio-htino- material of a nation. Such work must come from 
those who represent that outgrowth of the martial spirit that, 
even among a people absorbed in trade, is ever asserting itself. 

The days of peace that intervened between the close of the 
war with Mexico and the opening of the rebellion exhibited a 
better conception and a more practical solution of the militia 
problem than had the earlier years of the century. The old 
days of the " umbrella and cornstalk militia " of the village 
muster and carousing *' training time " had given place to a 
better discipline. In certain States the composition and 
efificiency of the so-styled " crack " regiments gave real impor- 
tance to the organization of what was known as the National 
Guard and the country, when its time of stress arrived found 
itself the possessor of a fair number of trained soldiers whose 
schooling in arms could be put to practical use and who by 
their promptness, their zeal and their excellence in discipline 
really stood in the gap and offered the first successful barrier 
to armed rebellion. Such regiments, to name certain examples, 



2 20 HORSE, FOOT AND DRAGOON. 

were the Sixth and Eighth Massachusetts and the Seventh 
New York. 

But, after all, the little regular army of the United States — 
amounting in 1850 to less than twelve thousand men — was the 
only actual fighting force that, during the years of peace, 
upheld the name and kept alive the record of the American 
Soldier. Commanded by Major-General Winfield Scott, a 
veteran of three wars, the rank and file of the army — "horse, 
foot and dragoon" — did much to help in the opening and 
development of the new lands that, with each new year, were 
becoming the homes of busy and persistent communities. 

Conveying emigrant trains to the widening West, garrison- 
ing the coast-line and the frontier, fighting Indians, escorting 
exploring expeditions — the life of the American Soldier even 
in " the piping times of peace," was by no means the profitless 
and lazy profession that so many pictured it. 

The officers were, for the most part, men trained in the 
military academy of the nation to command and care for those 
placed under their leadership and charge. They were, as 
General Marcy assures us, "generally men of intelligence and 
culture, who entertained the most exalted conceptions of integ- 
rity and moral personal responsibility." 

That they were brave on occasion the record of many a 
frontier fight will prove ; that they were not lax in discipline 
the thousand tales of garrison life attest — one post comman- 
dant might be mentioned whose police service was so thorough 
that he has been known, on discovering a quid of tobacco or 
the stump of a cigar lying in the walks on the parade ground, 
to call out a police party of several men with hand carts and 
shovels to remove the obnoxious obstructions ; that they were 
jealous, each, of their own individual arm of the service and had 



HORSE, FOOT AND DRAGOON. 221 

an exalted opinion of their respective duties is shown by the 
anecdote told of General Bragg of the artillery and a Mexican 
veteran, who resigned from the army in 1856 because Jefferson 
Davis, then Secretary of War, ordered him with his battery to 
the Indian country, as Bragg expressed it, "to chase Indians 
with six-pounders." 

As to the men themselves who filled the ranks of the 
slender army when on a peace footing it must be admitted that 
they were of "all sorts and conditions." The regular army 
was the last resort of those who, unsuccessful or indolent in the 
field of active labor and of business pursuits, shirked the hot 
fire of competition before which men must rise or fall by their 
own exertions and contented themselves with beino- mere 
musket-bearers, at the beck and call of their appointed leaders. 

Many good men, really fond of the soldiers' life, were to be 
found in the ranks, but there was both pith as well as reason in 
the excuse of an old soldier, put on his defense for some breach 
of garrison discipline, that the court " could scarcely expect to 
find the entire catalogue of cardinal virtues embodied in every 
individual specimen of a class of men who only received for 
their services the paltry compensation of six dollars a month." 

It was a "paltry compensation " for what was in the main a 
dull routine. But dull routine can be hard and tiring work. 
Listen to this extract from a soldier's diary as, off on New 
Mexican plains in the year 1854 a tired trumpeter recorded his 
labors for the day: "February ist. I commenced the day this 
mornins: by beino- orderly buoler for the commandinc: officer, 
and at half-past eight in the morning attended guard-mounting ; 
immediately after, saddled up and rode two miles and assisted 
at digging a grave ; returned at half-past twelve and started again 
at one with the funeral procession, after which was marched 



222 HORSE, FOOT AND DRAGOON. 

home ; dressed for evening parade, marched back again to the 
corral or stable, assisted in flogging a deserter, came home, ate 
supper, and here I am, scratching it down in the old journal. 
Some people surmise that a soldier's life is a lazy one, but 
soldiers themselves think otherwise." 

It was dull routine, but even out of this comes sometimes 
brilliant flashes of bravery, instances of duty doggedly done 
yet with a persistence that amounts to heroism. What more 
dramatic than the equal duel — man to man and gun to gun — 
of Lieutenant David Bell and White Wolf the Apache chief, 
each with twenty-three followers } It was during the Indian 
troubles in New Mexico in the fifties and White Wolf had 
been guilty of an especially atrocious outrage which Lieu- 
tenant Bell burned to avenge. Both parties met on a scout. 
A parley led only to perplexities and as words were of no avail, 
lieutenant and chief, dragoon and brave, each picked out an 
opponent and, man to man, sought to fight it out. With shout 
and war-whoop, with cavalry charge and erratic Indian dash, all 
the time giving shot for shot was this duel by wholesale fought 
out ; twenty-one of the forty-six combatants were killed or 
wounded; scarcely a man on either side was without hurt of 
some sort. At last White Wolf fell ; the remnant of his band 
fled and the duel was ended. 

So, too. Lieutenant Hood with but seventeen men, ambushed 
by over fifty Lipan and Comanche warriors, in those same risky 
days on the plains, showed both pluck and endurance that were 
heroic in the extreme. Outnumbered, three to one, he yet 
encouraged his men to fight for their lives. Again and again, 
with rino^ino: cheers the brave seventeen charoed the veiling 
savages and mingled in a hand-to-hand conflict. The odds 
were against the seventeen. Six had already fallen beneath the 



1^ 







MARCV'S I'KKII.OUS MARCH. 



HORSE, FOOT AND DRAGOON. 225 

Indian fire. Hood's saber arm hunij useless at his side, back and 
still backward were they pressed, their rifles empty, their 
strength almost spent. " Out with your revolvers, boys," 
shouted Hood, couraoeous to the last ; '• one more shot ; we 
mustn't give it up ! " Inspired by his superb courage the little 
command turned on the enemy in a fierce revolver charge. 
It was the desperate last chance and so impetuous was it that 
the Indians fell back, turned and fled. Then with empty re- 
volvers the troopers, leaving twenty-two of their antagonists 
dead or dying galloped from the field that had well-nigh been 
their grave, victors over an ambuscade that it seemed impossi- 
ble to break. 

As plucky, too, though in endurance rather than in des- 
perate fight, were the men of Marcy's command who, in No- 
vember, 1857, went westward from Fort Bridger on an expe- 
dition for exploration and relief. Through an almost trackless 
wilderness, across lofty and rugged mountains they struggled 
on in the very depth of winter loyal to their duty and striving 
for results that to them personally could be of but little value 
or advantage. The snows grew deeper and deeper ; the cold 
became more and more intense ; their horses and pack-ani- 
mals starved and fell by the way; supplies gave out; the suf- 
fering grew almost unbearable and yet not a man murmured or 
complained. They had volunteered for this desperate service 
and they would keep their promise or die. For fifty-one days 
the weary march continued. The path through the snow could 
only be made to bear weight by the efforts of the advance men 
of the party who on hands and knees pressed and hardened the 
treacherous and impalpable mass. For the last twelve days of 
the march the only food was the tough " mule-steak " cut from 
the starved beasts of burden and sprinkled with gunpowder in 



2 26 HORSE, FOOT AND DRAGOON. 

lieu of salt and pepper. " I am indebted," wrote General Marcy, 
years after, " for my existence at this moment to the unpar- 
alleled fortitude, endurance and sufferings of a noble little band 
of soldiers who nearly sacrificed their own lives to extricate me 
from the perils of a winter s journey over the snow-clad summits 
of the Rocky Mountains." 

Almost as full of hardships and quite as eloquent in deter- 
mination, pluck and a dogged perseverance, was Colonel Wash- 
ington's march to Sante Fe in 1849, in which Lieutenant Stein 
and his company of the Second Dragoons fought against 
Indians, thirst and hunger on New Mexican deserts and "brave 
and vigilant, never murmured, but showed the noblest traits of 
men and soldiers." The private's weary march and patient 
round of duty has often contained more of romance and dis- 
played more of real valor than all the momentary excitement 
of the headlong charge or the fiery crash of battle. 

However hard was the private soldier's life that of the officer 
whom he was bound to obey was scarcely easier because of rank 
or station. General Albert Sidney Johnston, paymaster of the 
army from 1849 to 1854, made six annual tours of the Texas 
frontier traveling each year, in rough country riding, over four 
thousand miles. Lieutenant William P. Sanders, in pursuit of 
deserters, in 1857, accompanied by but one man, rode from 
Fort Crittenden, Utah, to Los Angeles, California, over a rugged 
and dangerous road, captured and delivered up the deserters 
and returned to Fort Crittenden, a journe}' of sixteen hundred 
miles, in less than sixty days. Lieutenant A. E. Burnside in 
1857 rode with special dispatches twelve hundred miles from 
El Paso to Washington, facing and escaping all sorts of dan- 
gers and reaching Washington fully a month before the civilian 
who was his rival in the race. 



HORSE, FOOT AND DRAGOON. 227 

A soldier's first duty is obedience. The " thinking bayonet " 
which was a popular characterization of the intelligent soldier 
during the Great Rebellion has really no place in the ranks 
of those enlisted men known as the regular army — musket 
bearers, who must know no duty but unquestioning obedience. 
Whether the authority in power ordered troops to put down 
threatened insurrection in South Carolina in 1832, or to guard 
in Boston streets a fugitive slave sent back to his owners by 
due process of law in 1854 the soldiers who, north or south, east 
or west, marched in the ranks of the regulars had no business 
to question the orders of their superiors : 

" Theirs not to reason why, 
Theirs but to do or die." 

It is this blindness to everything but duty, this readiness to 
obey orders lead where they may, that gives to the "regulars" 
a certain assurance and stamp of real authority that neither 
volunteer nor militia-man can possess save by long service and 
experience. The " regulars '" are the representatives of Gov- 
ernment and the Law. Their measured tread and machine- 
like discipline are able to stay every wave of opposition, every 
advance of warring factions and of unlawful organization. The 
majesty of authority that attached to the legionaries of old 
Rome has been the attribute of every regular army from ancient 
times even to the present day. 

This, so far as the United States Army is concerned, was 
especially noticeable in the unhappy days of the Kansas 
troubles of 1856, when the new State, torn by civil feud and 
rent by the strife for possession waged by " Free Soilers " and 
" Pro-Slavery men," became the scene of disorder, of outrage 
and of blood. The appearance of the United States Regulars 



2 28 HORSE, FOOT AND DRAGOON. 

dispatched to the disturbed sections could always stay the 
fratricidal strife and establish law and order where none before 
existed. General Cooke in his reminiscences of army life at 
that time says : " It was part of the education of both parties 
that they still respected national authority. There was but one 
flag yet. At Lecompton I rode alone — leaving my forces far 
behind — in front of an army of thousands, who with cannon- 
matches lighted, were about to attack that territorial capitol, 
and ordered them to retire, and the nation's representative was 
obeyed. The Second Dragoons were prominent in these im- 
portant services, but with them were the First Cavalry, the 
Sixth Infantry and a battery of the Fourth Artillery. This 
force was afterward interposed between a regularly organized 
arm}^ of twenty-seven hundred men and the town of Lawrence 
which they had marched to attack." 

The time came when rebellion rose above authority, and 
neither regular army nor national government had power to 
stay the tide of civil war. But when that day came many of 
those whose position gave strength and form to the army of 
the United States themselves deserted their post and were false 
to their oaths of allegiance. And when leaders fall away how 
can the army maintain itself intact .f* It is said that General 
Sherman, who, when the rebellion broke out, was the super- 
intendent of the Louisiana Military Academy recognized 
months afterwards in the prisoners taken in war most of the 
cadets of his institution who when the conflict came hastened to 
enlist in the Confederate army. So, too, West Point men and 
brother officers of the regular army found themselves divided 
by questions of duty and of loyalty and met as enemies on 
bloody fields in the stubborn battles of the Civil War. 

For that desperate hour, indeed, officers and men through 



HORSE, FOOT AND DRAGOON. 229 

all the years that intervened between the Mexican War and 
the attack on Sumter were all unconsciously preparing. The 
military incidents of these days of peace were but few and far 
between, but the efficiency and discipline that were displayed 
by the small standing army of the United States (never in all 
those years exceeding twelve thousand men), by certain of the. 
militia regiments of the National Guard and by such superbly- 
drilled private organizations as Ellsworth's Zouaves all bore 
fruit when the call to arms rang out in the opening days of the 
Great Rebellion, 

There were certain uneasy Americans who were anxious for 
excitement or ambitious for gain and so made haste to join 
themselves to the filibustering expeditions of Lopez the Span- 
iard and of William Walker the American (that " gray-eyed 
man of destiny " who fell a victim to his own unlawful schemes). 
They all met at last with defeat, but even in this lawless adven- 
turing they were but schooling themselves for the days of real 
war that were coming on apace. The militia-men who responded 
to the call to put down riot in New York City in 1S49 and in 
Kansas in 1856 were quick to respond to the call for more seri- 
ous duty when the iron hail rattled against the walls of Sumter. 

And on Western plains the brave regulars who penetrated 
untrodden wildernesses and braved hunoer and thirst, weariness 
and cold for the punishment of restless Indians or the exten- 
sion of the governmental authority acquired a steadiness and 
a nerve that were to serve them well when the War Depart- 
ment at last ordered them to act as the nucleus of the nation's 
defenders in a war that was to lift the American soldier, North, 
as well as South, to the foremost position among the fighting- 
men of the world. 

" Horse, foot and dragoon " alike were beinf^ schooled for 



230 HORSE, FOOT AND DRAGOON. 

greater and more serious service. The dull routine of camp 
life and of garrison duty, the countless ways in which ofificers 
and men sought to relieve the tedium of monotony and manu- 
facture excitement out of unpromising surroundings were soon 
to be exchanged for active service and stirring times. But of 
these neither militia-man nor regular yet dreamed. The one 
like the sober business man he was, stood behind his counter or 
sat at his desk thinking more of dollars than of rifle and saber; 
the other in sea-coast garrison or in frontier post lived careless 
of the future, weary only of the present ; or perhaps, off on a 
scout in the far Indian country he slept serenely with his holsters 
as his pillow and the sky as his tent cover, ready to spring to 
arms when the summons came. With pride in his horse, his 
uniform and his accoutrements he could sing with ringing and 
sturdy notes this song of " The Light Dragoons," written by 
one of his comrades : * 

" Good cheer, my steed ! 

Let thy headlong speed 
Dash the dew from the prairie grass. 

Shrink not, in the track, 

Let the hills fall back 
As the ranks of our scjuadron pass. 

" At the fall of night, 

In the gray twilight, 
When I've combed thy tangled mane, 

'Neath the light of the moon 

Then the light dragoon 
Will lie down by his steed again. 

" When sleep is done, 
And the rising sun 
Shall have burnished thy glossy hair, 

* Lieutenant I- P. Davidson; an officer of the First U. S. Dragoons. 



HORSE, FOOT AND DRAGOON, 231 

To horse again 
And we'll scour the plain 
And beat up the red-man's lair." 

And after each verse, with a boisterous energy that would 
set the echoes ringing through all those western hills, his 
comrades would roll out the chorus : 



Then up, my steed ! 

The wind's wild speed 
Is but slow to thy headlong flight ; 

And we'll rein up soon, 

And the light dragoon 
With his charger shall sleep to-night. 



CHAPTER XI. 




BOYS OF SIXTY -ONE 



O the States arrayed against 
the national authority, the 
greatest of American presi- 
dents said in his first in- 
augural, " in your hands, 
my dissatisfied fellow-coun- 
trymen, and not in mine 
is the momentous issue of 
civil war. The Govern- 
ment will not assail you. 
You can have no conflict without being yourselves the 
aggressors." 

All too soon did Abraham Lincoln receive the answer to 
his message of kindly forbearance. And when, at half-past 
four o'clock on that dark and raw April morning in 1861 that 
answer came in the shot that went hurtling over the water 
toward the dimly-outlined ramparts of beleagured Sumter all 
men knew its import. Civil war had begun. 

The result of that bombardment, of a national fortress by 
the nation's recreant sons proved vastly different from the 
popular prophecies. There was but one uprising in the North, 
but one in the South. The armed protests against war which, 



BOYS OF ' SIXTY-OS E. 233 

SO it was conjectured, would be made both North and South 
failed to materialize. There was no attempt at coercion in 
favor of union in the South, none in favor of secession in the 
North. "The Union forever!" and "Hurrah for Liberty!" 
were the only shouts that rallied young patriots in the North 
and young rebels in the South around the tables of the recruit- 
ing sergeants. 

Enthusiasm is contagious. Of it great enterprises are 
born, from it great achievements gain their noblest impulses. 
But unorganized enthusiasm is of no lasting value ; men must 
be molded as well as inspired if results are to be attained. 

When, the day after Sumter, President Lincoln's call for 
seventy-five thousand volunteers came as an appeal for instant 
succor, twice that number of Northern men clamored to be led 
against the nation's foes, hi response to the call for fifty 
thousand troops to make good the assertions of the new " Con- 
federacy " over three hundred thousand men were offered by 
the South. Sixteen Northern States and seven Southern ones 
in that historic spring of 1861 stood facing' each other in the 
attitude of war. But neither the North nor the South was 
prepared for the conflict. Arms and appointments were lack- 
ing. The recruits who were accepted were raw, undisciplined 
and inexperienced. In the first great clash of arms at Bull 
Run the forces of disorganization met and men awoke to the 
knowledge, dearly bought, of how valueless for real results is 
enthusiasm alone. Defeated in that bloody encounter the 
North was still the greater gainer, for Bull Run was a deeper 
disaster to the Confederate than to the Union forces. By it, 
the latter were stiffened into determined action, the former, 
lulled by false hopes, relaxed the vigor their desperate for- 
tunes needed. 



234 BOYS OF 'SIXTY-ONE. 

Brought face to face with stern and sudden need the nation 
learned its own incompetency. The slender regular army, 
upon which it should have relied until its reserve fighting- 
force could be o-athered for the master-stroke, was scattered far 
and wide, deliberately dismembered by the shrewd treachery of 
the traitorous war-secretary Floyd. On the fifth of April, 
1 86 1, less than four hundred out of the seventeen thousand 
troops who constituted the regular army were available for the 
defense of Washington. The rest were distributed throughout 
the entire country with but imperfect facilities to bring them 
to the threatened Capitol. This distribution, according to 
General Scott's detailed report, was as follows : Department 
of the East, 3894; Department of the West, 3584; Department 
of Texas, 2258; Department of New Mexico, 2624; Depart- 
ment of Utah, 685 ; Department of the Pacific, 3382 ; miscel- 
laneous, 686; grand total, oiTficers and men, 17,113. 

And upon these, even if available, who could rely.^^ It was 
a time for breaking faith. Men, educated at Government ex- 
pense, were proving recreant to their oaths of fealty and desert- 
ing the flag they had sworn to defend. Twiggs, a veteran fighter 
of the Mexican War, treacherously surrendered his entire 
command, the Department of Texas (nineteen army posts in all 
together with twelve hundred thousand dollars worth of mili- 
tary property), to the authorities of that far-off State. Even 
the sole safeguard of the imperilled nation seemed slipping 
away. 

And yet there was loyalty in the regular army worthy of 
eternal remembrance. The ranks were faithful though their 
leaders might prove false. It is asserted that » there were, 
in 1 86 1, military posts abandoned by all the commissioned 
officers, of which not one of the enlisted men proved untrue. 



BOYS OF 'SIXTV-OiVE. 



235 



The regulars surrendered by Twiggs in Texas, threatened to 
kill any man who attempted to disarm them and marched 
away with the stained and bullet-torn old flag of the Eio-hth 




Regiment streaming above them while their band played na- 
tional airs. 



A n 1 1 



Ana agamst the hesitating disloyalty of such notable 
leaders as Lee and the two Johnstons there shone briohtly out 



236 BOYS OF 'SIXTY-ONE. 

the unwavering fidelity of others, also Southern born, to whom 
loyalty to the old flag and fealty to their plighted word were 
paramount to the fictitious claims of any rebellious State. " I 
am a Southern man," said Major Robert Anderson, the hero of 
Sumter, " but I have been assigned to the defense of Charles- 
ton Harbor, and I intend to defend it." And Winfield Scott, 
the general of the army, the veteran of n^iany a fight, when 
urged to " follow his State " unhesitatingly declared : " Such a 
proposal is a mortal insult, I have served my country under 
the flag of the Union for more than fifty years, and as long as 
God permits me to live I will defend that flag with my sword, 
even if my own native State assails it." 

But if the regulars could not be made at once available 
their place was made good by those next to them in efficiency 
and discipline. The uniformed militia were quick to respcnd. 
Within fortv-eio'ht hours after the President had issued his call 
for troops the Sixth Regiment of Massachusetts was on its way 
to Washington, and, before another forty-eight hours had passed, 
had dyed the stones of Baltimore with the first blood of the 
civil war. 

Hard behind them pressed the New York Seventh and the 
Massachusetts Eighth. Other regiments followed fast. The 
beleaguered capital was saved. So surely can discipline conquer 
doubt. For it is said that as the New York Seventh marched 
up Pennsylvania Avenue on their way to the White House, 
" with their well-formed ranks, their exact military step, their 
soldierly bearing, their gayly floating flags, and the inspiring 
music of their splendid regimental band, they seemed to sweep 
all thought of danger and all taint of treason not only out of 
that great national thcu-oughfare, but out of every human 
heart in the Federal city. The presence of this single regi- 



BOYS OF 'SIXTY-ONE. 237 

ment seemed to turn the scales of fate. Cheer upon cheer 
greeted them, windows were thrown up, houses opened, the 
population came forth upon the streets as for a holiday. It was 
an epoch in American history. For the first time, the com- 
bined spirit and power of Liberty entered the nation's 
capital." * 

Recruiting went on rapidly. New regiments were commis- 
sioned with marvelous speed. Volunteers poured into Wash- 
ington at the rate of four thousand a day. The whole loyal 
North was on fire. Such incidents as the first shot against 
Sumter, the attack on the Massachusetts Sixth in Baltimore, 
and the famous order of General Dix : " If any man attempt [ 
to haul down the American flag shoot him on the spot ! " were 
the strongest incentives to patriotism. In teeming city, and 
bustling village, in gossipy cross-road store and in the quiet 
farmhouse on western prairie and eastern hillside, the stout 
vouno- fellows who were not carried awav with the hurrah of 
enthusiasm felt keenly, as one private expressed it, that he 
should have to go at last or forfeit his birthright as an Ameri- 
can citizen. War was in the air. The labors of peaceful life 
were neglected. The citizen-soldier was awaking to a sense 
of his dutv. 

A city of tents sprang up along the Potomac. Soldiers 
were everywhere. They came from every Northern State, their 
speech " be\vraying " them, as it did the men of Galilee. Yankee \ 
and Hoosier, Knickerbocker and Buckeye, Green Mountain 
boy and men of the prairies and the lakes they were comrades 
in camp, brothers in effort and duty. They were of all stages 
of greenness and all grades of eflficiency from the raw recruit 
who scarcely knew the " right face ! " from the " shoulder 

* Nicolay & Hay : " Abraham Lincoln. A History." 



238 BOYS OF 'SIXTY-ONE. 

arms ! " and the equally fresh captain who \yould command his 
company to " Gee around that hole ! " to the crack militia-man 
or the veteran Indian fighter, the West Point graduate and the 
dis:nified oeneral of division. 

Eternal drilling is the price of discipline. It must come 
before advance or victory but it is tedious work to the enthu- 
siastic soldier whose one desire is a chance to display his valor. 
"There are some things," says Private Goss remembering those 
first days of preparation, " that take down even excess of patriot- 
ism. The musket after an hour's drill seemed heavier and less 
ornamental than it had looked to be. It takes a raw recruit 
some time to learn that he is not to think or suggest, but obey. 
Some never do learn. I doubt if my patriotism during my first 
three weeks' drill was quite knee-high." 

But true patriotism outlives the drudgery of drill even as it 
burns high and clear before the supreme act of enlistment. 
And how high and clear that flame did burn, the silent records 
of many a Northern home could well attest. The young blood 
of the nation was surging toward the field of action, too hot to 
be cooled by thought of drudgery, too rapid to be stayed by 
plea or threat or any home restriction. The opening months 
of that first war summer, when men were seekinor the recruitingr 
office or steadily pressing southward were among . the most 
dramatic phases of the nation's stirring story. One of the 
noblest of the many noble war poems* has grandly caught and 
kept the inspiration : 

" The drum':? wild roll awakes the land, the fife is calling shrill ; 
Ten thousand .>tariy banners blaze on town and bay and hill ; 
Our crowded streets are throbbing with the soldiers' measured tramp ; 
Among our bladed cornfields gleam the white tents of the camp, 

* A poem by Elbridge Jefferson Cutler read before tlie Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard College in 1S61. 



BOYS OF 'SIXTY-OXE. 239 

The thuiuleis of I lie rising war hush Labor's drovvsv hum, 
And heavy to the ground the first dark drops of battle come; 
The souls of men flame up anew, the narrow heart expands. 
And woman brings her patient faith to nerve her eager hands. 
Thank God ! we are not buried yet,, though long in trance we lay — 
Thank God ! the fathers need not blush to own their sons to-day ! 

" Oh ! sad and slow the weeks went by — each held his anxious breath, 

Like one who waits in helpless fear some sorrow great as death. 

Oh ! scarcely was there faith in God, nor any trust in man. 

While fast along the southern sky the blighting shadow ran. 

It veiled the stars one after one, it hushed the patriot's song. 

And stole from men the sacred sense that parteth right and wrong; 

Then a red flash, like lightning, across the darkness broke. 

And, with a voice that shook the land, the guns of Sumter spoke : 

Wake, sons of heroes, wake.! the age of heroes dawns again, 

Truth takes in hand her ancient sword and calls her loyal men, 

Lo, brightly o'er the breaking day shines F"reedom's holy star ! 

Peace cannot cure the sickly time — all hail the healer, War! 

" That call was heard by Plymouth Rock, 'twas heard in Boston Bay; 

Then up the piney streams of Maine sped on its ringing way, 

New Ifampshire's rocks, Vermont's green hills, it kindled into flame, 

Rhode Island felt her mighty soul bursting her little frame. 

The Empire City started up, her golden fetters rent. 

And meteor-like across the North the fiery message sent, 

Over the breezy prairie lands by bluff and lake it ran, 

Till Kansas bent his arm, and laughed to find himself a man. 

Then on by cabin and by camp, by stony wastes and sands, 

It rang exultant down the sea, where the golden city stands. 



" And wheresoe'er the summons came there rose an angry din, 

As when upon a rocky coast a stormy tide comes in. 

Straightway the fathers gathered voice, straightway the sons arose. 

With flushing cheek, as when the East with day's red current glows. 

Hurrah ! the long despair is past, our fading ho])es renew. 

The fog is lifting from the land, and lo, the ancient blue! 

We learn the secrets of the deeds the sires have handed down. 

To fire the youthful soldier's zeal and tend his green renown. 

Who lives for country, though his arm feels all her forces flow, 

'Tis easy to be l^rave for truth as for the rose to blow. 



2 40 BOYS OF 'SIXTY-ONE. 

"O Law, fair form of Liberty, God's light is on thy brow, 

O Liberty, thou soul of Law, God's very self art thou ! 

One, the clear river's sparkling flood, that clothes the bank with green, 

And one, the line of stubborn rock that holds the water in ; 

Friends whom we cannot think apart, seeming each other's foe, 

Twin flowers upon a single stalk, with equal grace that grow ; 

O, fair ideas ! we write your names across our banner's fold. 

For you the sluggard's brain is fire, for vou the coward bold ; 

O, daughter of the bleeding past ! O, hope the prophets saw! 

God give us Law in Liberty, and Liberty in Law ! 

" Full many a heart is aching with mingled joy and pain. 
For those who go so proudly forth and may not come again ; 
And many a heart is aching for them it leaves behind, 
As a thousand tender histories throng in upon the mind ; 
The old men bless the young men, and 'praise their bearing high, 
The women in the doorways stand to wave them bravely by : 
One threw her arms about her boy and said, ' Good-by, my son, 
God help thee do the valiant deeds thy father would have done ! ' 
One held uj) to a bearded man a little child to kiss, 
; And said, ' I shall not be alone, for thy dear love and this.' 
And one, a rosebud in her hand, leant at a soldier's side, 
' Thv country needs thee first,' she said, 'be I thy second bride!' 

"O, mothers, when aroimd your hearths ye count your cherished ones, 

And miss from the enchanted ring the flower of all your sons ; 

O, wives, when o'er the cradled child ye bend at evening's fall. 

And voices which the heart can hear across the distance call , 

O, maids, when in the sleepless nights ye ope' the little case^ 

And look till ye can look no more upon the proud young face. 

Not onlv pray the Lord of Life who measures mortal breath. 

To bring the absent back unscathed out of the fire of death ; 

O, pray with that divine content which God's best favor draws, 

That whosoever lives or dies He save His holy cause. 

" So out of shop and farmhouse, from shore and inland glen, 

Thick as the bees in clover time are swarming armed men ; 

Along the dusty roads in haste the eager columns come. 

With flash of sword and muskets' gleam, the bugle and the drum; 

Ho ! comrades, see the starry flag broad-waving at our head, 

Ho! comrades, mark the tender light on the dear emblems spread! 




Ol'R liRdlUKK rilE KM-..M\. 



BOYS OF \STXTY-ONE. 243 

Our fathers' blood has hallowed it, 'tis part of their renown, 
And palsied be the caitiff hand would pluck its glories down; 
Hurrah ! hurrah ! it is our home where'er thy colors fly, 
We win with thee the victory, or in thv shadow die I 

" O, women, drive the rattling loom, and gather in the hav, 

For all the youth, worth love and triith, are marshaled for the fray ; 

Southward the hosts are hurrying, with banners wide unfurled, 

From where the stately Hudson floats the wealth of half the world ; 

From where amid his clustered isles Lake Huron's waters gleam. 

From where the Mississippi pours an unpolluted stream ; 

From where Kentucky's fields of corn bend in the southern air, 

From broad (>hio's luscious vines, from Jersev's orchards fair; 

From where, between his fertile slopes, Nebraska's ri\ers run. 

From Pennsylvania's iron hills, from woodv Oregon ; 

And Massachusetts led the van, as in the da\s of vore, 

And gave her reddest blood to cleanse the stones of Jialtimore. 

" O, mothers, sisters, daughters, spare the tears ye fain would shed. 

Who seem to die in such a cause, ve cannot call them dead ; 

They live upon the lips of men, in [licture, 'oust and song. 

And Nature folds them in her heart, and keeps them safe from wrong. 

O, length of days is not a boon the brave man prayeth for, 

There are a thousand evils worse than death or anv war ; 

Oppression with his iron strength fed on the souls of men. 

And License with the hungry brood that haunt his ghastly den; 

But like bright stars ye fill the eye, adoring hearts ye draw, 

O sacred grace of Liberty ' O majesty of Law ! 

" Hurrah ! the drums are beating, the fife is calling shrill, 
Ten thousand starry banners flame on town, and bay, and hill ; 
The thunders of the rising war drown Labor's peaceful hum. 
Thank Ciod that we have lived to see the saffron morning come. 
The morning of the battle-call, to every soldier dear, 
O jov ! the crv is " Forward ! " O joy ! the foe is near ! 
For all tlie crafty men of peace have failed to purge the land, 
Hurrah 1 the ranks of battle close, God takes his cause in hand." 

Who, now living, that remembers tliose stirring clays of 
'sixty-oiie would forego the recollection ? It was a time of 
intense excitement, North and South alike — of flag-raising in 



244 BOYS OF 'SIXTY-ONE. 

every town and debate and decision in every home ; of eloquent 
appeals to patriotism in pulpit and on stump; of drilling on 
every village common ; of tenders of troops from every State 
capital; of warlike preparations in every city ; of hurried orders 
for war material in workshop and foundry ; of daily parades ; of 
flag-presentations ; of soul-stirring songs and ringing cheers at 
every patriotic utterance ; of quick action ; of tearful partings ; 
of hurried good-byes ; of tear-wrung God bless yous ; of neg- 
lected private business ; of eternally rolling drums and endlessly 
marching regiments ; of lint-scraping and bandage-tearing ; of 
excitement, enthusiasm and stern determination everywhere. 
Drake DeKay, a fervid and practical young patriot, stirred by 
the President's call, closed his shipping oiifice in New York with 
no more ceremony than to pin this notice on his door : " Gone 
to Washington. Back at close of war." The youth of the 
South frenzied with an even intenser excitement clamored to be 
led against "the mud-sills of the North." The land was mad 
for war, crazed with enthusiasm, and men on either side the 
line marked by the doubtful border States, felt each that they 
alone were right and echoed the poet's cry : 

" For all the crafty men of peace have failed to purge the land, 
Hurrah ! the ranks of battle close ; God takes his cause in hand." 

There were many impatient souls that as the spring grevv' 
to summer felt that Providence " took his cause in hand ' all 
too slowly, there were many trusting hearts that could not 
fathom why action did not follow enthusiasm and push the war 
to an instant conclusion. The murder of the gallant Ellsworth, 
the heroic death at Big Bethel of Greble the young West 
Pointer and of Winthrop, the brilliant writer, were 'not, it 
seemed, quickly avenged. And so out of impatience and desire 



BOYS OF 'SIXTV-OXE. 245 

came the mad demand of those who waited and watched at 
home: "Onto Richmond!" Americans are always prone to 
rebel at the old adage that bids us" make haste slowly." Presi- 
dent and cabinet, military leaders and advisers yielded to the 
unwise demand of the people. Bull Run was fought against 
the better judgment of those who should have delayed the 
hostile meeting — it was fought and the North, in bitter humil- 
iation, saw its legions streaming back to the capital, routed and 
panic-stricken. 

Said General Scott, worn out with worry and the criticism 
that follows failure : " I am the greatest coward in America, sir. 
I will prove it. I have fought this battle against my judgment; 
I think the President of the United States ought to remove me 
to-day for doing it. As God is my judge, after my superiors 
had determined to fight it I did all in my power to make the 
army eflficient. I deserve removal because I did. not stand up, 
when my army w-as not in a condition for fighting, and resist 
it to the last." 

Bull Run tried the temper as it strengthened the will of the 
North ; it exaggerated the valor as it disorganized the caution 
of the South. " Brethren, we'd better adjourn this camp-meet- 
ing and go home and drill," cried an Illinois minister as the 
news of the defeat interrupted his sermon. " A few more Bull 
Run thrashings will bring the Yankees once more under the 
yoke as docile as the most loyal of our Ethiopian chattels," 
announced a Southern newspaper. 

Really a rout for both sides this first pitched battle of the 
war was an acknowledged defeat only for those whose legs 
were longest. Jefferson Davis, seeing the streams of Confeder- 
ate fugitives pouring from the field considered the day lost. 
"Battles are not won," said he, "where two or three unhurt 



246 



BOYS OF 'SIXTY-ONE. 



men are seen leading away one that is wounded." Private 
John Tinkham of a Northern regiment declared that after 
getting the order to retreat he should not have stopped run- 
ning short of Boston if he had not been halted by a soldier 
with a musket on the Washington end of Lonu; Bridse. 




IN THE RKCRUITING OFFICE. 



Checked enthusiasm either dies out altogether or is changed 
into a glorious, because stern and unyielding determination. 
Out of the gloom of Bull Run sprang such a determination on 
the part of the North. Its patriotism was too sincere to be 
wrecked by one set-back, its purpose too deep to .yield to the 



BOYS OF 'SIXTY-ONE. 247 

appeals of timidity or the arrogance of successful rebellion * 
The people, united in a resolution that was only strengthened by 
disaster, ground their set teeth and bent to their task. Fresh 
troops were enlisted, new regiments were hastened to the front. 
Three hundred regiments of fully a thousand men each were 
dispatched to what were esteemed the places in immediate 
dano-er. The statistical record of men present for duty shows 
that on the first of January, 1862, there were five hundred and 
twenty-seven thousand two hundred and four Union soldiers in 
the volunteer army of the United States as against one hun- 
dred and fifty-seven thousand on July first. 

Of this total nearly two hundred thousand men were upon 
the muster-rolls of the Army of the Potomac. The disaster at 
Bull Run had there led to instant change. Worn out by age 
and infirmities General Scott had resigned and General George 
B. McClellan, whose brilliant achievements among the hills of 
Western Virginia had made him a popular hero, was given the 
command of the Army of the Potomac. At once he proceeded 
upon his herculean task of organization and discipline. 

East and west the forces of union and disunion held back 
from immediate conflict, striving, instead, to complete the organ- 
ization so necessary to successful action. The border line was 
seamed with earthworks, the blockaded coasts bristled with for- 
tifications. The hostile armies faced each other, glaring across 
a death line that reached from the Atlantic to the mountains of 
New Mexico — a battle front of fully two thousand miles. 
This was practically divided into three sections. In the East, 
McClellan with the Army of the Potomac was opposed to Lee 
and Johnston with the Army of Northern Virginia; in the 

* " Had Johnston or Beaure^jard pushed their success and occupied Washington," says General Sherman, 
"it would not have changed the result, because twenty millions of freemen would never have submitted tamely to 
the domination of the slave-holder faction." 



2 48 BOYS OF 'SIXTY-ONE. 

center Buell with the Army of the Ohio had for his antagonist 
Albert Sidney Johnston with tlie Army of the Cumberland ; in 
the west Halleck with the Army of the Missouri was confronted 
by McCuUoch and the Army of the Mississippi. 

At last, though all too slowly to suit the impatient North, 
the tug of war came. It came with varying results and with 
uncertain efforts, each side as yet feeling its way. Of the half- 
dozen engagements that took place between the. disastrous July 
of 1 86 1 and the opening months of 1862 scarce one was deci- 
sive or really important until the fall of Fort Donelson on the 
sixteenth of February drew all eyes to the operations in the 
west that culminated in the famous two days' fight at Shiloh — 
the first great battle of the Civil War. 

So, after all, it was from the west that the first note of victory, 
the first prophecy of final triumph came. In the east, 
McClellan now raised to the command of all the armies of the 
United States, was displaying his wonderful ability as the best 
organizer of armed troops known to American history ; but so 
jealous was he of his own forces, so desirous of putting every 
available man into the Army of the Potomac, that he had but 
scant sympathy for the other divisions of the great army of 
which he was commanding general. " Every man sent to any 
other department," says a recent authority, " he regarded as a 
sort of robbery of the Army of the Potomac." Day after day 
the same report went to the North : " All quiet on the Potomac ;." 
day after day president and people grew more anxious, more 
critical, more impatient. 

Who then can wonder that the news from the west sent a 
thrill of joy through the waiting, weary heart of the north. 
Grant's stern reply to Buckner, the commander at Fort Donel- 
son : "No terms except an unconditional and immediate 



BOYS OF SIXTY-ONE. 249 

surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately 
upon your works," was the answer to the nation's prayer 
for prompt action and immediate results. They came 
speedily. Donelson and its fifteen thousand men surren- 
dered to the Union arms. Grant was made a major-general 
of volunteers. His name was upon every lip. And then came 
Shiloh. 

In the countrv round about that little loo- church in 
Southwestern Tennessee that gave its name to what has been 
called " the most famous and to both sides the most interesting 
of the battles of the war," for two long days the bloody conflict 
raged. Furious, deadly and stubbornly contested this bloodiest 
battle ever fought west of the Alleghanies gave the key-note to 
all the succeeding contests of the war — it was fighting to kill 
because it was fighting to conquer. Forty thousand Northern 
troops joined battle with an equal number of Southern soldiers. 
It was a duel to the death. " The troops on both sides," says 
General Grant, "were American and, united, they need not fear 
any foreign foe." Divided, alas, their obstinate fight was terri- 
ble in its intensity, terrible in its results. Every inch of ground 
was disputed stubbornly, every possible device for wresting 
victory from defeat was made use of by both parties. And 
when after a two days' fight the Southern army turned in 
flight, its leader dead, its object defeated, its high hopes 
dashed to earth the loss entailed by that terrible struggle was 
as appalling as the victory was complete. At least eleven 
thousand men was the roll in killed and wounded on either side. 
" If we should read," says Mr. Johnson, " that by some disaster 
every man, woman and child in the city of Concord, New 
Hampshire, had been either killed or wounded, and in the next 
day's paper that the same thing had happened in Montgomery, 



2 so BOVS OF 'SIXTY-ONE. 

Alabama, the loss in life and limb would only equal what took 
place on the mournful field of Shiloh." 

It was a test battle. For the first time Southern dash and 
discipline had grappled with Northern endurance and dis- 
cipline, on equal terms and on a fair field. It was the first 
real battle of the war. For this the Boys of 'Sixty-one had 
drudoed and drilled, for this North and South had been 
clamorously calling. After Shiloh the Southern boast that 
a Southern gentleman could whip five Yankees was no more 
heard ; the Northern bravado that the war could not outlast 
one fair battle died away forever. Both sides now understood 
that war meant work and that it meant a stubborn death- 
grapple ere the end could come. Every man who outlived the 
heated fire of " the hornet's nest " at Shiloh came from the 
conflict with a higher regard of the fighting qualities of " his 
brother the enemy" than he had held before. 

But though, before Shiloh, no real battle had been fought, 
the dozen or more engagements had shown the temper of the 
men who had sprung to arms. Ellsworth at Alexandria and 
Baker at Ball's Bluff had shown how daring and foolhardiness 
may run side by side. Lyon the gallant Westerner, shot down 
while heading a charge at Wilson's Creek — "the bloodiest bat- 
tle, up to that date, ever fought on American soil" — showed 
how deep was his patriotism, how determined his purpose by 
leaving, by his will, his entire fortune to the United States for 
use in defense of the imperilled nation; Mulligan, holding with 
but twenty-eight hundred men his post at Lexington, Missouri, 
aoainst an overwhelminor force of fourteen thousand did but 
prophesy by his bravery his still greater valor w^hich on a later 
day, at Winchester fight, caused him to say to those who bore 
him dying, from the field, " Lay me down and save the flag;" 



BOYS OF -S/XTV-O.VE. 



251 



Smith, of the regulars, a loyal " West Pointer," could answer 
the insinuations that hinted at his disloyalty as he listened 
with flashing eyes : " Oh ! never mind ; they'll take it back 
after my first battle." And "they" did. And this same 
magnetic leader showed the stuff of which brave men are 
made when leading a charge at Fort Donelson, cap twirling on 
sword-point, he shouted: "No flinching now, my lads. Here 

— this is the way ; come on ! " 
and so dashed through to vic- 
tory. 

For a while the exuberant 
spirits of those first volunteers 
who rushed to the war as to 
some prolonged picnic lost 
alike their elasticity and their 
enthusiasm even, under the 
routine of the camp and the 
depressing effect of their sur- 
roundino:s. The men who had 
Qfone to the front, swarmino' 
over the roofs of freight cars 
or clinging to the breezy " cow- 
catcher," who had scaled the walls of the Capitol and frisked 
like monkeys along its high-hung cornices and water-tables, 
who had rushed into the water with drawn knives to "tackle" 
the voracious and deadly sharks and worried the souls of slow- 
witted "contrabands " by their gibes and pranks — these found 
discipline a hard word to construe and duty but too often 
drudgery and weariness. "Mud," says Private Goss, "took 
the military valor all out of a man. Any one would think 
from reading the Northern papers that we had macadamized 




loR IHE SOLlJlKKS. 



252 BOYS OF : SIXTY-ONE. 

roads over which to charge at the enemy. It would have 
pleased us much to have seen these 'on to Richmond' people 
put over a five-mile course in the Virginia mud, loaded with a 
forty-pound knapsack, sixty rounds of cartridges and haversacks 
filled with four days' rations." 

" The Confederate army," says General Beauregard, " was 
filled with generous youth who had answered the first call to 
arms. For certain kinds of field work they were not yet 
adapted, many of them having come with their baggage and 
servants. These they had to dispense with, but not to offend 
their susceptibilities I exacted the least work from them apart 
from military drills even to the prejudice of important field 
work when I could not get sufficient negro labor. They ' had 
come to fight and not to handle the pick and shovel,' they 
declared emphatically." 

It was hard too for recruits to learn that there is really no 
place in the ranks for the " thinking bayonet " — as some unmili- 
tary folk liked to call the volunteer of '6i. "I thought, sir — " 
a certain private began, but was speedily interrupted. " Think ! 
think!" roared the colonel; "what right have you to think .? 
I do the thinking for this regiment. Go to your quarters ! " 
The rank and file and under officers of a regiment are not 
taken into the confidence of their superiors. Their duty is 
simply to obey orders. 

And gradually they learned to obey. As the days rolled by 
and none knew how soon the test of battle might come, dis- 
cipline came to the aid of duty and made of the raw recruits 
soldierly fellows, anxious to make proof of their training and 
show their valor in the face of the foe. " Every army has its 
driftwood soldiers," says Mr. Cofifin, " valiant at the mess table, 
brave in the story about the bivouac fire, but faint of heart 



BOVS OF 'SJXTY-OXE. 253 

when the battle begins." That this is but too true every battle 
shows. Bull Run was its earliest proof and even at Shiloh the 
ten thousand National and Confederate deserters showed the 
yet uncertain morale of the armies — but these recreants are 
the exception, the minority when the bugle sounds "fall in" and 
the stirring command to charge means desperate work at hand. 
In all those early months of tedious preparation for the 
greater conflict to which Shiloh was the prelude the soldiers 
North and South were learning the hard lesson of how to obey. 
The unwritten romance of the camps could tell of many a fight 
with pride and many a concjuest over self in the hard school of 
the daily drill and of the lonely picket-line. There is often 
more of heroism in this latter dangerous duty than on the 
noisier line of battle and in the daylight charge to death. The 
silent hero is often the most valorous. The pathetic poem of 
disputed authorship, so popular during the war, told all too 
vividly the story of the lonely picket: 

" All quiet along the Potomac," they say, 

" Exce])t now and then a stray picket 
Is shot, as he walks on his beat to and fro, 

By a rifleman hid in the thicket; 
'Tis nothing — a jirivate or two now and then 

Will not count in the news of the battle ; 
. Not an officer lost — only one of the men. 

Moaning out, all alone, his death-rattle." 

" There's only the sound of the lone sentry's tread, 

As he tramps from the rock to the fountain, 
And he thinks of the two in the low trundle-bed 

Far awav in the cot on the mountain. 
Tlis musket falls slack — his face, dark and grim, 

Cirows gentle with memories tender. 
And he mutters a prayer for the children asleep. 

For their mother — may Heaven defend her! 



2 54 BOYS OF 'SIX TV- ONE. 

" He passes the fountain, the blasted pine-tree — 

The footstep is higging and weary ; 
Yet onward he goes, through the broad belt of light, 

Toward the shades of the forest so drearv. 
Hark! was it the night-wind that rustled the leaves? 

Was it moonlight so suddenly flashing ? 
It looked like a rifle. . . . ' Ha ! Mary, good-by ! 

And the life-blood is ebbing and plashing. 

" All quiet along the Potomac to-night ; 

No sound save the rush of the river ; 
While soft falls the dew on the face of the dead — 

The picket's off duty forever ! " 



CHAPTER XII. 



FROM SHILOH TO APPOMATTOX. 



N a certain July morn- 
ing in the year 1863 
three young fellows 
in their early teens 
walked into a yet 
scarcely - awakened 
Connecticut village. 
They were on a 
short vacation 
tramp between 
New York and 
Boston, stiffening" 
their muscles and 
strengthening their 
legs as a prepara- 
tion, it might be, 
for that real marching that all young fellows of those stirring 
war-times hoped or expected some day to do on Southern 
battlefields. For two days they had heard but little of the 
outside world. Twenty-seven years ago tidings from abroad 
did not penetrate the country sections as speedily as now. 
And these lads were so anxious for news! How could it be 

-55 




256 FROM SHTLOH TO APPOMATTOX. 

otherwise with them ? They were wide-awake New York 
boys steeped in the seething excitements of those restless days 
when all America seemed to live from day to day upon the 
anxious seat. 

Suddenly, as they passed a yet unopened house, one of the 
boys spied a discarded newspaper of the previous day lying 
where it had been thrown aside upon the trim green lawn. 
Instinctively they all stole in and confiscated the vagrant sheet. 
And as one unfolded it and the others peered over his shoulder 
all three gave a shout of joy: "The Great Union Victory at 
Gettysburg ! " " Vicksburg Ours ! " Here was news indeed. 
Exultant and thankful the three lads laid down the borrowed 
newspaper and went their way with swinging steps and light- 
ened hearts, prouder than ever of the boys at the front, with 
whom they hoped some day to cast in their lot. 

It was indeed oreat news for all the North. The o^reatest 
from Sumter to Appomattox. For Gettysburg and Vicksburg 
marked the turning-point of the war. And yet not the greatest. 
There was one occurrence, not military indeed but national, 
that hastened results more than any other achievement. It 
was a simple dip into the inkstand, a single act of justice. But 
when Abraham Lincoln laid down the pen that signed the 
immortal proclamation of emancipation the days of rebellion 
were numbered. The Edict of Freedom was America s master- 
stroke. 

But those who in Northern homes watched and waited in 
those troublous times, finding criticism so easy, patience so 
hard, did not then appreciate to the full the importance of this 
greatest state paper of the century. To those eager boys 
Gettysburg and Vicksburg meant more than any presiden- 
tial proclamation. And so to all the North the tidings 



FROM SHJLOH TO APPOMATTOX. 257 

from Gettysburg and Vicksburg were both welcome and 
wonderful. 

When the conflict that had raged so furiously through 
three terrible days gained its first note of victory from the 
wonderful charge of Stannard's brave brigade and closed with 
the bloody repulse of Pickett's magnificent charge on Cemetery 
Ridge the tide of rebel invasion was swept backward from the 
Pennsylvania hills and the greatest stroke of the Confederacy 
was brought to naught. 

At that very moment that Gibbon was holding the ridge 
at Gettysburg, and, with a loss of half his force, hurled back 
the last effort of invasion, Grant, outside the ramparts of far-off 
Vicksburg, was writing to Pemberton the rebel commander: 
" I have no terms but the unconditional surrender of the 
city and garrison." The Fourth of July, 1863, was a notable 
national holiday. For on that anniversary of American Inde- 
pendence the might of American freemen was fullv asserted — 
the last great attempt of rebellion at invasion was thwarted and 
the Mississippi was made free from the Lakes to the Gulf. 

In both these pivotal happenings the American Soldier was 
at once the cause and instrument. For this he had labored 
through many weary months, for this he had gone through all 
the hard routine of drill and discipline, for this he had borne 
the brunt at Shiloh and gone through the terrible experience 
of the Seven Days' Battle in Virginia swamps, for this had he 
closed in hand-to-hand fight at Perrysville and turned at bay 
on Malvern Hill, for this had he stood the test at Murfrees- 
boro' and Antietam. East and West had worked and struggled 
toward victory. To East and West at almost the same hour 
had come the glorious consummation. 

But through how much of heart-ache and despondency, 



258 



FROM SHILOH TO APPOMATTOX. 



throusfh Iiow much defeat and disaster had this outlook toward 
peace been reached. From Shiloh to Gettysburg had been, 
indeed, a hard road to travel. 

And yet there had been but little wavering in will, there had 
been no shrinkage in the determination to win. Through all 




CHARGE OV STANNAKD'S BRIGADE AT liETTVSBURG. 



these days of delay and inaction, of impatience and expectation, 
of doubtful battle and balked endeavor, of incompetency in 
leadership and division in council the bafifled North again and 
again had sent its reinforcements to the field. Tramp ! tramp ! 
tramp ! with firm and measured tread, steadily, solidly, cease- 



FROM SHILOH TO APPOMATTOX. 259 

lessly, from every Northern State the soldiers of the Union set 
their faces southward, dispatched for the strengthening of their 
brethren at the front. Tramp ! tramp ! tramp ! in all the 
mechanical evolutions of review and drill, of advance and 
retreat and the charge of desperate battle the blue coats all 
along that shifting death line that stretched from the Mississippi 
to the sea marched and countermarched, fought and fell. 

And still more men were needed. The cause of war was as 
insatiate as was that horse-leech of whom Scripture tells, who 
"hath two daughters whose only cry is: Give, give, give!" 
South as well as North this cry for fresh blood rang out again 
and again ; South as \yell as North the fighters fell into line 
until it seemed to those who watched at home as if none would 
be left as bread-winners when so many went away. 

To the first call of President Lincoln on April 15, 1861, for 
75,000 men, the enthusiasm inspired by Sumter's fall yielded at 
once an hundred thousand in reply. The later calls of May 
and July, 1S61, for 500,000 men brought the Government nearly 
700,000 in response. And yet, with the next year, came another 
call for 300,000 volunteers and from every quarter they rallied 
by thousands while, of those already in service, other thousands 
re-enlisted "for three years or the war." 

The verses of that unknown author whose measures found 
an echo in many a loyal heart recall to us the steady outpour 
of Northern vigor that came as the answer to the president's 
call of July, 1862 : 

" We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more, 

From Mississippi's winding stream and from New England's shore ; 

We leave our ploughs and workshops, our wives and children dear, 

With hearts too full for utterance, with but a silent tear; 

We dare not look behind us, but steadfastly before : 

We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more ! 



26o FROM SHJLOH TO APPOMATIOX. 

" If you look across the hilltops that meet the Northern sky, 

Long moving lines of rising dust your vision may descry ; 

And now the wind, an instant, tears the cloudy veil aside, 

And floats aloft our spangled flag in glory and in pride, 

And bayonets in the sunlight gleam, and bands brave music pour : 

We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more ! 

" If you look all up our valleys where the growing harvests shine. 
You may see our sturdy farmer boys fast forming into line ; 
And children from their mother's knees are pulling at the weeds, 
And learning how to reap and sow against their country's needs; 
And a farewell group stands weeping at every cottage door : 
We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more ! 

" You have called us and we're coming, by Richmond's bloody tide. 

To lav us down, for Freedom's sake, our brothers' bones beside, 

Or from foul treason's savage grasp to wrench the murderous blade. 

And in the face of foreign foes its fragments to parade. 

Six hundred thousand loyal men and true have gone before : 

We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more ! " 

Six hundred thousand loyal men and true had <gox\Q before. 
In the spring of 1862 a force of 637,126 men was in the service of 
the Union, but the waste of this gallant force by the guns of 
the enemy and by that still deadlier foe — disease — had not 
been offset by successive battle. The ill-fortune of the Union 
arms through 1862 made still more troops necessary and 
the August call for yet another three hundred thousand men 
taxed alike the patience and the patriotism, the resources and 
the conscience of the loyal North. 

" The defeat of the Confederate Army at Gettysburg and 
the capture of Vicksburg," says General Sherman, "should 
have ended the civil war — but no! the leaders demanded the 
'last ditch' and their followers seemed willing." And so the 
war went on. New levies of troops were called for, new en- 
listments ordered; to McClellan the dilatory drill-master sue- 



FROM SHILOH TO APrOMATTOX. 261 

ceeded at length Grant " the hammerer," and the blue and the 
gray closed in the last desperate struggle for supremacy. 

It was not all young blood alone that responded to these 
later calls. In 1863 a regiment went from Iowa known as "the 
gray-beard regiment/' not a man of which was under forty-five 
and many in which were over sixty years of age. It was said 
of this "gray-beard regiment " that they had already contributed 
fourteen hundred sons and grandsons to the war. 

In the long period of conflict — a period stretching from 
the fall of Sumter on the fifteenth of April, 1861, to the death 
of Lincoln on the fourteenth of April, 1865, four years to a day 
— the number of men recruited for the service of the United 
States was 2,690,401 ; the number enrolled in the armies of the 
Confederacy has never been fairly determined, but was at least 
a million and a half. For the first years of the war, as we have 
seen, recruiting was spontaneous and enthusiastic, but as the 
conflict " strung out " to its close the call for volunteers was 
less generously responded to until at the last service in the 
North was only obtainable through an ineffectual draft and the 
payment of large sums of money in "bounties" — a premium 
for enlistment, and in the South by a sweeping conscription of 
all white men resident in the Confederacy between the ages of 
sixteen and sixty — a measure of which it was remarked that 
the Confederates were robbing the cradle and the grave to fill 
their armies. 

The four million Americans who took up arms for or against 
the government of the United States may be classed under 
three general heads — the " hurrah " boys, the duty soldiers and 
the purchase-money men. To these should properly be added 
the conscripts, North and South — soldiers against their will, 
who marched in spite of themselves and fought under protest. 



262 FROM SHILOH TO APPOMATTOX. 

The smoke of Sumter lingered long in the air but, gradu- 
ally, the reckless enthusiasm of the early days of the conflict 
subsided into astern sense of duty. To enlist " just for the fun 
of it" became less and less frequent and men sought the 
recruiting ofifice because they felt that they must rather than 
from a mere love of fighting. 

And yet it was these " duty soldiers " who gave strength to 
the national cause and showed by a sacrifice of life to conscience 
that the end could only come in victory for the Union. 
t 

" I think about the dear, brave boys 

My mates in other years, 
Who pine for home and those they love, 

Till I am choked with tears. 
With shouts and cheers they marched away 

On glory's shining track , 
But ah 1 how long, how long they stay — 

How few of them come back ! 

" And when I kneel and try to pray, 

My thoughts are never free. 
But cling to those who toil and tight 

And die for you and me. 
And when I pray for victory, 

It seems almost a sin 
To fold my hands and ask for what 

I will not help to win."' 

Such men as this, struggling with the two-sided question of 
duty generally found their way at last to the recruiting ofiice 
and helped to win the victory for which they had prayed. 

And at last through blood and tears " glory's shining track " 
led on to victory. The " great hammerer " (as Grant has well 
been called) with the strength of a nation behind him and 
veteran fighters at his command finally beat down the weaken- 
ing cause of rebellion and closed at Appomattox in generous 




"no YOU WANT TO LIVE FOREVER?" 



FROM SHILOH TO APPOMATTOX. 265 

conditions to a conquered foe the four long years of stubborn 
strife. 

Who can rightly sum up in few words the heroisms and the 
valor of those days of struggle? They were exhibited in every 
small encounter, they w^ere displayed in every mighty battle. 
Neither side could claim the monopoly of bravery. The War 
for Secession was a revelation to the world of American cour- 
age, American pluck and American endurance. The bloody 
angle at Spottsylvania, the "slaughter pen" on the slope of 
Little Round Top at Gettysburg, the " hornet's nest " at Shiloh, 
the last grand dash at Chickamauga — these and countless 
other places of crisis and posts of danger stand in the memory 
of those who yet survive as proof of the courage and persistence 
of the American soldier. 

And so from Bull Run to Shiloh, from Shiloh on to Gettys- 
burg and Appomattox the " cruel war" went on — with defeat 
here, with victory there, with plans frustrated one day and 
realized the next, with reconnaissance and sortie, with artillery 
duels and hand-to-hand encounters, with the " ping " of bullets 
from the rifle pits and the unrecorded romances of the picket 
line, with the furious charge, the death-clamber over hostile 
ramparts, the battle, the capture, the prison-pen and escape, 
until at last came the end and the furled flags and the silent 
cannon told that the conflict between brothers was over and 
that the brave men, North and South, were brothers indeed 
once m.ore. 

Not all the fighters in blue were Hectors, nor was every 
one in gray an Achilles. Though there is an inspiration in 
valor, heroism is not always " catching." Cowardice is as old 
as Cain and while time calls for tests of bravery so long will 
there be those who flinch before the test. It is a mistake to 



266 FROM SHILOH TO APPOMATTOX. 

suppose that soldiers clash into battle with avidity or double- 
quick to a charge without a tremor. Many a time have the 
fighters needed to be fairlv driven into fiQ^ht, as even a blooded 
racer may balk before a five-barred gate. " Come on, come on, 
my men ! " cried a fiery rebel colonel at Malvern Hill, as before 
a charge his men seemed to hesitate ; " what are you waiting 
for.? Do you want to live forever 1 In with you ! " and " in " 
they went. Over the wires once went the facetious dispatch 
of the observant operator : " The Seventeenth Pennsylvania 
Cavalry just passed here, furiously charging to the rear." 

Many a private's knee shook when the order "Fall in, 
men!" came and he knew a battle was at hand; more than 
one boaster, valiant only at mess, has dived into hiding as 
with shriek and whirr the deadly shell has cut the air above 
him, as certain that his doom was its mission as was poor 
Darky Bill, the company cook, who declared that every shell 
that sent him "kiting" into cover was shrieking: "Ah-h-h, 
where's dat nicr^rer! where's dat nioorer ! ivhcrcs dat nioroer! " 

Civilians do not have a monopoly of terror and the men 
that " skedaddled " before Morgan's picturesque raid in the 
North and Sherman's historic "bummers" in the South some- 
times wore uniforms and carried sword and musket. 

For not alone does the occasional private show the white 
feather. The weakness of knees has sometimes been known to 
affect also the ofBcer, whom favoritism or official patronage has 
put in command of men braver than he. "^Why don't you get 
behind a tree, Jim.^" shouted one private to another as, in one of 
the Virginia battles, the " zip " of the flying balls sent many 
a man dodging for shelter. "Tree!" yelled the unsheltered 
private ; " confound it ! There ain't enough for the officers." 

There were " weak-kneed brothers " and " number one " out- 



FROM SHILOH 2 AJ'J OMATTOX. 



'.Gy 



lookers In every regiment. Worse than tliese, there were desert- 
ers on both sides, there were cravens and skulkers and " bounty- 
jumpers," as in every community the bad find place among the 
o-ood and God's cleansing rain falls alike on just and unjust. 
But discipline conquers insubordination and brings even 
timidity steadily into line. The men who fought from a sense 




morgan's raidkrs. 



of duty far outnumbered those who were weak of heart or 
treacherous in faith. And these won the victories. 

" There is something grand," says the drummer-boy Harry 
Kieffer in his sprightly recollections, " in the promptitude with 



268 FROM SHILOH TO APPOMATTOX. 

which the order to ' fall in ' is obeyed. Every man is at his 
post. Forcing its way as best it can through the tangled under- 
o-rowth of briers and bushes, across ravines and through 
swamps, our whole magnificent line advances, until after a half- 
hour's steady work, we reach the skirmish line, which, hardly 
pressed, falls back into the advancing column of blue as it 
reaches a little clearing in the forest." 

The heroes of that greatest of great rebellions were many. 
To name them would need a volume, to set down the deeds of 
valor done would be but an endless repetition of heroisms. 
How could we even commence the list ? Grant the general, 
"the commander that never took a step backward ; " Sherman 
the persistent; McClellan the matchless engineer; Sheridan 
the fiery rider; Hancock "the superb; " Custer with the heart 
of flame ; Kearney " who knew not to yield " and Thomas the 
"rock of Chickamauga," according to Greeley "the greatest 
soldier of them all." Every patriot at the North had his 
favorite to cheer to the echo or to run into the current " patter- 
sono-s " of the day. And even yet history cannot weigh reputa- 
tions perfectly nor say who was " best " among them all. And 
on the other side the line — how shall that roll be fitly com- 
menced — Lee, recreant but royal, perhaps, all things con- 
sidered, the greatest leader that ever generaled a lost cause — 
fiehting ever a losino; battle, prolific in device, masterly in ex- 
ecution ; Albert Sidney Johnston, a gallant soldier, a born 
leader, who died on the field of Shiloh, a martyr to his own 
indomitable energy; " Stonewair' Jackson, " Lee's right arm," 
rapid, bewildering, magnetic ; Polk, " priest and warrior ; " Stuart, 
perhaps the best cavalryman America has ever produced and a 
thousand others mistaken in judgment, brave in action — 
American soldiers all. 



FROM SHILOH TO APPOMATTOX. 269 

And, following their leaders, from the ranks on either side 
a countless host emerges — brothers in bravery as in speech, if 
foemen in the hour of fis^ht. 

A driver in the regular artillery, shot through the body at 
Olustee, with his life blood streaming from this mortal wound, 
struggled to extricate his team from the deadly tangle and to 
carry off his gun until, his strength not being equal to his valor, 
he fell dead in the resolute but vain attempt. 

And in that same Olustee fight, the rebel lieutenant Col- 
quitt was a conspicuous object to the troops on both sides as, 
galloping in front of the Confederate ranks, he waved a battle 
flag and exhorted the men to stand fast and not to lie down or 
shelter themselves lest the enemy should suppose they had 
broken. 

In Russell's brilliant charge on the redoubts of the Rappa- 
hannock Sergeant Roberts of the Sixth Maine was first inside 
the works. Finding himself alone he deemed discretion the 
better part of valor and cried out " I surrender." But, turning, 
he saw his comrades tumbling over the parapet. " No, no ; I 
take it back ! " he yelled, made a dash for the rebel colors and 
captured them. 

Colonel Terry, the Texas crack shot, coolly aiming his piece, 
dropped the United States flag at Fairfax Court House by 
cutting the halyards with a rifle shot, dashed into the melee 
and carried off the flag. 

At Spottsylvania Corporal Weeks captured, all unaided, the 
rebel colors and their guard of six lusty Confederates, and on 
the same bloody day Sergeant Fasnacht performed precisely 
the same feat with the single argument of an empty musket. 
On the official list of those to whom medals of honor were 
awarded for bravery during the war of the rebellion two hun- 



2 70 FROM SHI I. OH TO AJTOMATTOX. 

dred and eighty-six men in the ranks were honored for this 
same dangerous action — gallantry in the capture of the 
enemy's f^ag. 

In Sheridan's orreat Richmond raid the First North Carohna 
charged the Sixth New York battery. In the crush and strug- 
gle a Confederate ofhcer cut his way straight to the rear piece 
and laying his hand on the gun exclaimed : " This is my piece." 
" Not by a darned sight," replied a New York cannonier, leap- 
ing on his orun as with a " scientific " blow from the shoulder he 
planted his fist between the eyes of the rebel colonel, knocked 
him off his horse and took him prisoner. 

At that brief but bloody fight at Olustee, already referred 
to. Colonel Fribley's colored troops met the enemy at short 
range though they had never had a day's experience in load- 
ing and firing. " Old troops," says General Hawley, " finding 
themselves so greatly overmatched, would have run a little and 
re-formed — with or without orders. The black men stood to 
be killed or wounded — losing more than three hundred out of 
five hundred and fifty men." 

Bravery in battle is heralded far and wide, repaid with the 
medal of honor and the applause of a hero-loving world.. But 
there is a moral bravery greater even than that which faces 
cannons or springs forward to the deadly charge. Such was 
the conduct of that Ohio regiment left without supplies, suffer- 
ing for food, desperate enough to appropriate anything that 
should come in their way. In the dead of night they hear the 
rumble of wagon wheels. " Grub ! " they yell, alive with the 
joy of approaching relief, and springing into the road stand 
ready to help unload. But the heavy wagon goes straight on 
without stopping. Furious at such neglect a dozen strong 
hands catch at the horses' heads, a swarm of blue-coats clamber 



FROM SHILOH TO APPOMATTOX. 



271 



into the wagon. Down tumble the supplies ; off go the heads 
of barrels, the tops of cracker boxes. Hunger stops at nothing. 
"Not for us, eh? "comes the indignant cry in response to the 
threats and appeals of the drivers. " Well, I guess ! Nobody 
else is going to have this. We're hungry enough to eat you 
and your horses." "But, boys, boys! for God's sake hold 
on," the overpowered driver 
cries. "This grub is for 

the Wisconsin fellows 

below you. They have been 
without food twenty-four 
hours longer than you have. 
They're starving ! " With- 
out a word, with scarcely a 
nioment's hesitation, box- 
lids are hammered down, 
supplies reloaded and the 
hungry heroes with a part- ^ 
ing cheer send on the load 
untouched to those whose 
necessity is even greater 
than theirs. 

In May, 1863, a force 
of rebel cavalry swooping 

down on Stoneman's advance captured Lieutenant Paine of 
the First Maine cavalry and his men. While crossing a rapid 
stream with the prisoners Lieutenant Henry, the commander 
of the rebel force, was suddenly swept from his horse by the 
rushine water. No hand amono: his own men was lifted to 
save him, but, quick as a flash, the Yankee prisoner, Paine, 
sprang from his horse, seized his drowning foeman by the 




AFTER THE BATTLE. 



272 



FROM SHILOH TO APPOMATTOX. 



collar and swam with him to the shore. For this act of heroism 
General Fitzhugh Lee gave Paine his liberty without parole or 
condition and, such are the strange conditions of war, the 
plucky Yankee lieutenant on reaching Washington found the 
rebel lieutenant whose life he had saved a prisoner in the Old 
Capitol prison and there again befriended him. 

And Bayard Wilkeson — the Sidney of the war — let his 
name have place in this all too brief suggestion of brave 
deeds. Scarcely more than a boy, only nineteen, he held his 
command — Battery G Fourth U. S. Artillery, of which he 
was lieutenant — in an exposed position on the Union right 
at Gettysburg until the rebel General Gordon ordered two 
batteries to train every gun upon him. Then desperately 
wounded, Wilkeson fell from his horse and dragged himself 
into the rebel lines. There, lying wounded to the death, he 
asked for water. A canteen was brought him but as he took it 
a wounded soldier, probably one of the enemy, saw it and 
cried : " For God's sake give me some." The young hero passed 
the canteen untouched to the sufferer who greedily drank every 
drop. Then Wilkeson, courteous to the end, smiled on the 
man, turned slightly and died. Rightly named; Bayard in 
truth ; not even the old cavalier of far-off days sans peur et 
sans reproche did ever a nobler or more knightly deed. 

But why increase the list ? There have been heroes in 
every conflict as there are brave men always, as well in peace 
as war, but the annals of that bloody war for secession are em- 
phasized throughout by valor and punctuated with heroism : 

" Oh, not alone the hoary Past 

Spilled precious princely blood; 
Oh, not alone its sons were cast 

In knightly form and mood ; 



FROM SHILOH TO APPOMATTOX. 273 

Perennial smells of sacrifice 

Make sweet our sickened air; 
And truth as leal as Sidney's, lies 

Around us everywhere. 

"Renown stands mute beside the graves 

With which the land is scarred ; 
Unheralded our splendid braves 

Went forth unto the Lord ; 
No poet hoards their humble names 

In his immortal scrolls, 
But none the less the darkness flames 

With their clear-shining souls " 

Courage, it used to be asserted, was the cheapest thing in 
the Army of the Potomac, but so too was it equally common 
in the army of the center and the army of the west. Of physi- 
cal courage and contempt of death, says Rossiter Johnson, " no 
generation of Americans has shown any lack. From Louis- 
burg to Petersburg — a hundred and twenty years, the full span 
of four generations — they have stood to their guns and been 
shot down in greater comparative numbers than any other race 
on earth." Wearied and disheartened but plucky to the last the 
Confederate soldier made his homely butternut the badge of 
bravery and shed about a lost and desperate cause the halo of 
a deathless valor; stern and unyielding and never despairing of 
the right, the boys in blue glorified the hour of victory by their 
kindly helpfulness toward a fallen foe and by their mighty 
achievements made the name and the power of the American 
Republic honored and feared throughout the world. 

The last stand had been made, the last blow given, the last 
dashing charge attempted and repelled. With Appomattox the 
war ended. And the picture that General Porter draws so 
vividly may apply with equal truth to all the opposing forces 
that with folded banners drew backward, one to the North the 



2 74 FROM SHILOH TO APPOMATTOX. 

other to the South, from that wavering death-line that had 
stretched for so many months from the sierras to the sea: 
" The charges were withdrawn from the guns, the camp-fires 
were left to smoulder in their ashes, the flags were tenderly- 
furled — those historic banners, battle-stained, bullet-riddled, 
many of them but remnants of their former selves with scarcely 
enough left of them on which to imprint the names of the 
battles they had seen — and the Army of the Union and the 
Army of Northern Virginia, turned their backs upon each 
other for the first time in four long, bloody years." 



CHAPTER XIII. 



BOOTS AND SADDLE. 



OME again ! The gallant but 
hopeless defense of Rich- 
mond, which has oriven to 
Lee's wasted line the right 
to the name of heroes, had 
ended in the surrender at 
Appomattox and the war 
was over. The armies of 
the conqueror and the con- 
quered were disbanded or 
melted away, peace at last 
rested upon the land and the 
soldiers, North and South, 
became once again citizens 
and bread-winners. 

Six hundred thousand 
lives and six thousand million dollars had been the cost in 
blood and treasure at which the conflict had been waged ; but 
it had made the United States a nation and had put to rest 
forever the terror of civil war. 

Quickly the work of disbanding went on. The great 
reviews of the twenty-third and the twenty-fourth of May, 1865, 

275 




276 BOOTS AND SADDLE. 

when, first, the Army of the Potomac and, next, the Army that, 
led by Sherman, had made its historic march to the sea and 
"swung around the circle " of the Confederacy marched in close 
column, twenty-four deep, around the gleaming Capitol and 
down Pennsylvania Avenue to the reviewing stand at the 
White House. Two hundred thousand men and more, bronzed 
of face but with a free and steady step and the elastic spring 
which only the veteran soldier knows — the remnants of mighty 
regiments, their smoke-stained battle-flags torn by wind and 
fight, they marched in grand review before the President of 
the United States and the chiefs of the nation. The president 
— but not their president! Not the one man of royal soul and 
of homely face who through four weary years of war had never 
faltered, never despaired, but had worked steadily on for the 
end he knew would come, the end that now the grand review, 
the throbbing music of regimental bands, the streaming 
banners, the thronging streets of Washington welcomed with 
so much of pomp and exultation. Their captain — their presi- 
dent — where was he .f* "He had lived to enter the enemy's 
capital, lived to see the authority of the United States 
restored over the whole country and then was snatched away, 
when the people were as much as ever in need of his genius 
for the solution of new problems that suddenly confronted 
them." 

How many a soldier in that great review, missing the kindly 
face, the rugged features, the gaunt, ungainly frame that were 
as familiar as they were dear to all loyal Americans, felt as did 
the most American of all our American poets* when, out of the 
anguish of his soul, he wrote his grandest verse " My Captain " : 

♦Wait Whitman, whom Sir Edwin Arnold describes as " that grand old poet of yours whom America does not 
seem to appreciate." 



BOOTS AND SADDLE. 277 

" O Captain ! my Captain ! our fearful trip is done ; 
The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won ; 
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, 
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring; 
But O heart ! heart ! heart ! 
O the bleeding drops of red. 

Where on the deck my Captain lies, 
Fallen cold and dead ! 

" O Captain ! my Captain ! rise up and hear the bells : 
Rise up — for you the flag is flung — for you the bugle trills ; 
For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths — for you the shores a-crowding; 
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning ; 
Here, Captain ! dear father I 
This arm beneath your head ; 

It is some dream that on the deck 
You've fallen cold and dead. 

" My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still ; 
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will : 
The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done 
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won. 
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells ! 
But I with mournful tread, 

Walk the deck my Captain lies, 
Fallen cold and dead." 

The soldiers of the blue went home to welcoming throngs, 
gay flaunting banners, cheers and shouts of '■ Well done ! " 
The soldiers of the gray — that gray faded almost out of remem- 
brance, tattered and travel-torn almost beyond repair — went 
home to welcomes just as warm. They may have met regrets and 
murmurings perhaps over the end that had been defeat, but it 
was defeat bravely kept at bay through many bitter months ; 
and so, after all, the home-coming of the Southern soldier was 
a time of happiness and of joy to the war-spent veterans who 
had left their arms and artillery parked and stacked at Appo- 
mattox, at Raleigh, or at Shreveport and had taken nothing to 



278 



BOOTS AND SADDLE. 



their homes but their well-worn uniforms and a sense of duty 
— as they had understood it — valiantly done. 

The ravages of war had worked havoc in many a gallant 
command. Every Northern regiment had lost heavily in battle 
and yet more heavily under the fell hand of disease. Of the 
Fourth Iowa Infantry, comprising thirteen hundred men, fully 




THE Home-coming of the southern soldiers. 



one thousand had laid down their lives for their country. Of 
the Fifth Iowa Infantry which enlisted with 967 men and ofHcers 
and received 70 recruits, 89 were killed in battle, 90 died of 
disease, 281 were wounded, 221 broken in health were dis- 
charged for disability and 96 were captured only to die of neg- 
lect in rebel prisons — a terrible tale of loss. These figures 



BOOTS AND SADDLE. 279 

could be paralleled by the records of every State and not a 
veteran, back from the wars, but brought with him tender 
memories of comrades left behind and of nameless graves scat- 
tered all over the sunny South. That officers' reunion so deli- 
cately pictured by Major Halpine could find its counterpart in 
many an after-war celebration : 



" Three years ago to-day 

We raised our hands to heaven, 
And on the rolls of muster 

Our names were thirty-seven ; 
There were just a thousand bayonets, 

And the swords were thirty-seven, 
And we took the oath of service 

With our right hands raised to heaven. 



" Oh ! 'twas a gallant day, 

In memory still adored, 
That day of our sun-bright nuptials 

With the musket and the sword ! 
Shrill rang the fifes, the bugles blared. 

And beneath a cloudless heaven 
Twinkled a thousand bayonets, 

And the swords were thirty-seven. 

"Of the thousand stalwart bayonets 

Two hundred march to-day ; 
Hundreds lie in Virginia swamps, 

And hundreds in Maryland clay; 
And other hundreds, less happy, drag 

Their shattered limbs around. 
And envy the deep, long, blessed sleep 

Of the battle-field's holy ground. 

" For the swords — one night, a week ago, 

The remnant, just eleven. 
Gathered around a banqueting board 

With seats for thirty-seven ; 



28o BOOTS AND SADDLE. 

There were two limped in on crutches, 

And two had each but a hand 
To pour the wine and raise the cup 

As we toasted ' Our flag and laud ! ' 

" And the room seemed filled with whispers 

As we looked at the vacant seats, 
And, with choking throats, we pushed aside 

The rich but untasted meats; 
Then in silence we brimmed our glasses, 

As we rose up — just eleven — 
And bowed as we drank to the loved and the dead 

Who had made us thirty-seven 1 " 

Within six months after the fall of the Confederacy the 
million or more soldiers of the Union had returned to their 
homes. The vast Volunteer Army of the United States was 
a thing of the past. The regular army being a national organi- 
zation was still kept at its full standard of fifty thousand men 
and was employed in garrison duty and post service in the 
South and West. The United States was divided into five 
Military Divisions and these were subdivided into nineteen 
Departments. Among these departments the standing army of 
the United States was distributed. 

ForeiQ:n nations had declared that so laro;e a force of armed 
men could not be disbanded without trouble and possible anar- 
chy. Events proved the falsity of this prophecy and the re- 
action of restlessness that is to be looked for after every great 
war found expression in but two brief and purposeless eruptions 
— the "Fenian" excitement of 1866 and the "Ku-Klux" dis- 
orders of 1867-69. Both were erratic, both were foolhardy 
and, to a certain degree, ^picturesque. Both called for military 
intervention to overawe and disintegrate them and neither of 
them were in step with the desires or the spirit of the Amer- 
ican people. 



BOOTS AND SADDLE. 281 

General Thomas W. Sweeney, the leading spirit in the 
Fenian Invasion of Canada in 1866, was a brave and dashing 
American soldier. He had lost an arm at Cherubusco, while 
serving under Scott in Mexico; he had in 185 1 held Fort Yuma 
in California against a large Indian force, though he and his men 
were at starvation's door; he had bravely kept his charge of 
the United States arsenal in St. Louis, with but forty men, 
against three thousand clamorous Secessionists saying: "I'll 
blow it up and you with it before I surrender; there are only 
forty of us to die ! " he had served under Grant at Donelson 
and been made a brigadier-general for his bravery in the 
war. 

With Sweeney in the Canadian invasion of 1866 were other 
veteran soldiers, filled with Irish enthusiasm and hatred of 
England. But the United States, wisely, was true to her 
treaty-promises. General Meade and a sufficient force were 
dispatched to the border, the invader's supplies were cut off 
and the adventurers finally surrendered to the power of the 
United States. A later Fenian outbreak in 1870 was repelled 
by the Canadian militia and scattered by a United States 
marshal. 

The Southern restlessness was more serious because more 
secret. Dissatisfied men, rendered venomous by defeat and 
angered by the seeming inequalities of "reconstruction " sought 
to reverse the decision of the war, to terrorize the negro and 
keep Northern life and capital from the land that so needed 
this aid to right development. With a secrecy and an organi- 
zation that smacked of mediaeval barbarism they banded 
together under an oath more picturesque than practical : " I 
swear that by daylight and darkness, at all times and on all 
occasions, the steel shall pay the debt of steel, the lead shall 



282 BOOTS AND SADDLE. 

recompense for lead, the Southern Cross shall yet defy the 
world ! " 

There was much more to the same effect, but the valor that 
skulks in the shadow and strikes in the dark is the weakest 
sort of courage and usually comes to grief. Under vigorous 
measures and the presence of the United States soldier in the 
disturbed sections the attempt at an American vendetta was 
stamped out and the K. K. K. is now only a phase of the 
picturesque lunacies of America. 

So too in the reconstruction troubles through which the 
Southern States had naturally to pass before entire peace 
and unimpeded law were restored the soldiers of the United 
States called repeatedly to unquiet sections, established the 
national authority and brought rest to the yet disorganized 
communities. 

Gradually the East grew quiet ; the after-grumblings of 
strife were stilled ; the ravages of war were charitably covered 
over by a growing respect between men and by the healing forces 
of nature. Only in the West was there disquiet and unrest. 
There cavalrymen became hunters and soldiers scouts as the 
musket and sword that had conquered on Southern battle-fields 
were turned against the red-men of the plains, the canons and 
the lava beds. 

For years the Indians of the far West have been the tool 
and sport of American mismanagement. Injustice always 
breeds discontent and this, in the simple mind, leads to a desire 
for revenge. The barbarian is ever a child and must strike 
when struck or abuse when abused. So Navajo and Piegan, 
Apache and Modoc, Sioux and Nez Perce and Ute, tricked in 
trade, robbed by agents, worried by settlers, alternately cajoled 
and threatened, petted and harried, have turned protests into 




custkr's last stand. 



BOOTS AND SADDLE. 285 

uprisings and pleas into massacres until alike good and bad 
have fallen beneath their vengeance, the army has been kept 
on the alert and the red-man himself, always defeated, is 
becoming more and more a dependent and a serf. 

From the Apache and Cheyenne troubles of 1863 and '64 
until the successful policy of General Crook in 1883, the 
twenty years of frontier trouble have been full of peril, of 
action and of blood. 

The Indian policy of the Government has been fickle, 
illiberal, faithless and bad, the moral influence of the soldiers 
upon the red-men has been of the worst character, the military 
rule to which they have been subjected has been autocratic, 
tyrannical and full of harm, and the Indian wars of the United 
States have been, largely, of the nation's own making. 

But, as has before been shown, the causes of a war do not 
always govern the character of the fighters in that war and the 
bravery of the American soldier in his encounters with the 
"hostiles" of the mountains and the plains has been above 
criticism, positive and obstinate. Shirland and his California 
volunteers, the captors of Mangas Colorado the Apache ; Chiv- 
ington and his avengers at the camp of Black Kettle the Chey- 
enne; Fetterman and his eighty-four regulars making their 
last traoic stand against two thousand Northern Indians on 
Lodge Trail Ridge ; Powell and his thirty men at bay, but 
finally defeating with terrible loss Red Cloud and his twenty- 
five hundred Sioux ; Miles and his brave four hundred in the 
Wolf Mountains; the half-dozen cavalrymen of the gallant 
Sixth, holding their ground for thirty-six hours against a force 
of splendidly-mounted Kiowas and Comanches, twenty-five to 
one; Crook and his plucky New Mexican riders — wherever 
the bugle has sounded " boots and saddle ! " the Indian fighter 



286 BOOTS AND SADDLE. 

who wears the blue has proved his right to the name of fighter 
indeed. 

But, in all the sad and sorry story of Indian atrocity and 
American treachery, of Indian bravery and American valor 
there is no paragraph more startling, more bloody or more 
dramatic than is that which tells of the last gallant stand of 
Custer and his men — the Battle of Little Big Horn. 

It is the climax of all Indian warfare from the days of 
Philip of Pokanoket to those of Sitting Bull the Sioux and 
Geronimo the Apache, and is all the more absorbing because 
of the mystery that shrouds it and its hints at desperate valor 
which, alas ! no man of all that brave four hundred lives to 
prove or disprove. 

General George Armstrong Custer of the Seventh U. S. 
Cavalry was, in many respects, America's beau sabrcur. The 
choice of McClellan and the favorite of Sheridan, he was the 
idol of his own hard-riders and the envy of his Indian foemen. 
His very appearance was striking and picturesque as, in his 
broad cavalier's hat, his gold-bedizened jacket and high cavalry 
boots, with his long yellow hair flying in the wind he would 
ride like a tornado against rebel cavalry or Indian warrior — a 
subject worthy Vandyke's pencil, the very type of the dash- 
ing trooper of romapce. 

The war over, he was assigned to duty on the plains and 
became the most daring and most successful of the Indian 
fighters of 1870. On the fifteenth of May, 1876, Custer was 
ordered to lead his regiment, the Seventh Cavalry, as the 
advance of a joint expedition against the hostile Sioux. On 
the morning of the twenty-fifth of June, with five companies of 
his command amounting to not over four hundred men, he fell 
into a cleverly-arranged ambuscade of the confederated Sioux 



BOOTS AND SADDLE. 287 

backed by a force of at least three thousand Indian warriors. 
A desperate fight ensued. Valiantly holding his ground, vainly 
looking for the help that came not, stubbornly at bay but calm, 
cool and courageous to the last Custer fell fighting and his 
devoted soldiers to a, man fell, also fighting, around the body of 
their chief. 

Blinded by a savage ruse, himself the victim of political 
vv^iles that had stirred up his fighting blood and driven him to a 
determination to " make his mark " once more, Custer's un- 
guarded advance and reckless charge were, perhaps, unwise 
generalship, but they were the chief ingredients of heroism and 
a dauntless courage and as such have given him an immortality 
that will ever make him the typical Indian fighter of the nine- 
teenth century. Much is forgiven to valor; a brave man's 
death covers all mistakes. 

Of other instances of soldierly courage in the Indian fights 
that have become a part of American history since 1S65, there 
are many on record. There is always a fascination to us around 
the stories of life " among the red-skins," and, ignoring always 
the Indian's side of the question, we listen with quickened pulse 
and brightening eyes to the account of how Clark and his forty- 
eight men held over seven hundred " hostiles " at bay for 
fully three hours of battle ; how Sergeant Taylor at the risk of 
his life rescued his lieutenant (now Captain Charles King, the 
soldier-novelist) from Apache arrows, supporting his wounded 
oflBcer with one arm and with the other managing his deadly 
carbine ; how private John Nihill acted as a " flanker " to his 
eight comrades of the Fifth Cavalry in the heart of the White- 
stone mountains and held forty Indians at bay so that his 
brother-soldiers could escape from the ambush; how Amos 
Chapman, the scout of the Third Cavalry, leaped across the 



288 BOOTS AND SADDLE. 

body of his fallen comrade and held off the circling Comanches 
until he could " shoulder " the wounded man and bear him out 
of the death-trap into which he had fallen ; how private William 
Evans, of the Seventh Infantry, at the imminent risk of his life 
carried dispatches for General Crook through a country inhab- 
ited by hostile Sioux, dodging death all the way ; how Sergeant 
William Lewis of the Third Cavalry won a medal from Con- 
gress for volunteering to discover the whereabouts of Little 
Wolf and his Cheyenne warriors — all these we hear with 
pride as we do the countless other tales of risk and daring, of 
dash and valor that illumine the otherwise dull details of 
army life on the plains and make vivid finger-marks on the 
annals of Indian warfare. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE BOYS OF '98. 

TI7OR thirty-three years the noise of battle had been absent 
from the land. 1S65 had seen the last angry shot 
of war, and, since Custer's gallant fight in 1876, no Indian 
hostilities had risen to the importance of battle, while 
the standing army of the United States, reduced to its mini- 
mum of less than twenty-five thousand men, had been little 
more than an attenuated police force. Some disturbances 
there had been, such as the Orange riots of 1871, in New 
York Cit)^ the railroad strikes of the Middle and Western 
states, in 1877, and the imported anarchist plots of a later 
day, which were quelled only by the law of the bullet and the 
bayonet ; while, in one case at least, the militia of the states 
showed that, even when the sympathy of the soldier was with 
the victim of capital's oppression, his duty as an instrument 
of law and order rose superior to his sympathies. Only the 
loyalty of the militia and the superb discipline of the regulars 
kept the two weeks of terror in 1877 from developing into a 
time of anarchy and mob-domination. 

The peaceful work of the soldier in the years since the 
Rebellion has been of no little value to American life and 
progress. The great Centennial Exhibition of 1876 was 
made a marvel of regularity and good order by the directing 

289 



290 



THE BOYS OF \ 



hand of one of the nation's bravest soldiers, General Hawley 
of Connecticut. And in the elaborate display made by the 
United States government at that great exposition, and at the 
still vaster Columbian Exposition at Chicago in 1893, the part 
contributed by the War Department was both suggestive and 
creditable. There were to be seen all the latest developments 
in military art, guns of every size and style and mounting, 
pontoons, bridge trains, and army wagons: Cartridge-making 
went on before the eyes of the spectators, and the exhibits 
entered by the Engineer Corps and the Signal Service were 
especially valuable. 

From the days of Pike and Long to those of Fremont and 
the later explorers of our Western lands, the army of the 
United States has been foremost in expeditions of research 
and discovery in the remote and unknown sections of the 
nation's broadening empire. And, in these recent years, the 
cause of science owes to the brave investigations, under 
most adverse circumstances, of two gallant American soldiers, 
Schwatka and Greely, its latest information as to the lands 
and peoples about the frozen Pole ; while it is the army that 
has opened up to us the exhaustless opportunities of the Phil- 
ippines, the rich possibilities of Porto Rico, and the rediscov- 
ered values of the noble island of Cuba. 

This last contribution to American power and possession 
came through one of the briefest wars on record, in which 
regular and volunteer grappled with those unknown foes, 
temperature and climate, in a foreign land ; for the first time 
conducting operations off the mainland of the continent, and 
taking the soldiers of the Union into distant and unfriendly 
seas. 

The story of the causes and beginnings of what President 



THE BOYS OF '98 291 

McKinley calls "our extraordinary war with Spain" need not 
be recited here. It was an unavoidable conflict that mio-ht 
have been avoided, — if we can explain that apparently incon- 
sistent expression, — into which the President was forced by 
the persistence of the newspaper press, the clamor of Con- 
gress, and the pressure of the people ; all alike brought to a 
climax by that unfortunate and dastardly deed, the explosion 
of the battleship Maine on February 15, 1898, in the harbor 
of Havana. 

Even that dreadful disaster, while it aroused the indigna- 
tion and wrath of the American people, did not at once lead 
to the war that was inevitable. "Suspicion and horror," as 
President McKinley declared, " stirred the nation's heart pro- 
foundly ; " but, as in the case of the " shots heard round the 
world," at Lexington and Concord, the American people did 
not rush blindly into war, nor did they take up the sword 
until they had exhausted the means of peace. With a patience 
that was surprising, and the true Anglo-Saxon love of fair play, 
they awaited the report of the Naval Board of Inquiry as to 
the cause of the destruction of the Maine, while at the same 
time awaiting some result from the shadowy plans proposed 
by Spain for the relief of the persecuted people of Cuba. 

The report was as unsatisfactory as the reform. The 
Board of Inquiry declared that the Maine was blown up by 
a submarine mine, but made no direct charge against Spain ; 
the reform promised in Cuba amounted to nothing; and, urged 
on by the people and by the Congress, who unanimously voted 
a " defense appropriation " of fifty million dollars, the President 
recognized at last the necessity for final decision and action. 
He therefore declared that " in the name of humanity, in the 
name of civilization, in behalf of endangered American inter- 



292 THE BOYS OF '98 

ests, which give us the right and the duty to speak and act, 
the war in Cuba must stop." 

Peaceful measures had been of no avail. As in the s^reater 
strife for Union, thirty-seven years before, the words of Cutter's 
noble poem rang true again : 

"Lo, brightly o'er the breaking day shines Freedom's holy star; 
Peace cannot cure the sickly time. All hail the healer, War ! " 

The healer came quickly. Responding to the Presidents 
message of April 11, 1898, Congress, on the 19th of April, 
voted to interfere in the strife in Cuba, and Spain was told 
to " withdraw " from the island. The Spanish Minister refused 
to remain in Washington, and left at once ; while the Ameri- 
can Minister at Madrid was practically told to "get out." 

This action, under the rulings of international law, meant 
that Spain had declared war. This date was the 21st of 
April; and that is the date which will go into American 
history as the beginning of the war of 1898. 

The very next day the President of the United States 
announced the existence of a state of war, declared a blockade 
of Cuban ports, and on the 22d called for 125,000 volunteers. 
To this call almost ten men responded where but one could 
be taken; a second call for 75,000 was made on May 25, and 
with the regular army increased to 60,000 men, the United 
States regulars and the United States volunteers prepared to 
enforce the demands of the republic in the cause of justice, 
humanity, and right. 

The navy had been proportionately and speedily increased, 
and for a time it appeared as though the war was to be a naval 
rather than a land conflict. But opportunity came at last, as 
after long but necessary delay the navy cleared the path by 



THE BOYS OF '98 293 

locating and bottling up Cervera's fleet, which had given a 
scare to the whole Atlantic coast, from the day it sailed from 
the Cape Verde Islands and lost itself, to the morning that 
Schley saw it and locked it up in Santiago harbor. 

This changed the course of the war. Instead of assaulting 
Havana, or occupying Porto Rico as a base of supplies for a 
fall campaign against Cuba, the sudden determination was 
made to launch an army against Santiago from the rear, and 
by a union of action with the navy at the front to close in and 
crush or capture alike the army and fleet of Spain at Santiago. 

This was to be the first move. In case this success did not 
at once end the war, then a fall campaign against Havana was 
to be organized, which would call into service all the volunteer 
regiments who in camps of instruction or of concentration 
were being drilled into fighting material for this greater cam- 
paign, if it should come. 

So the Fifth Army Corps, concentrated at the camp at 
Tampa in Florida, was ordered to Cuba. The command was 
given to Major-General William R. Shafter, a rough and ready 
veteran of the Civil War, who was selected for the leadership 
because General Miles, the commanding general of the army, 
believed him to be just the leader for a short and sharp cam- 
paign, in which hardships, though necessary, would be brief, 
and inconveniences and discomforts would be philosophically 
accepted as " part of the day's work " by the troops selected for 
the service. 

The troops thus selected were from those especially inured 
to the chance of hardships, inconvenience, and discomfort — the 
regular army of the United States, the men who are trained to 
take things in their course with no thought of what will be 
said at home, for, too often, their only home is the barracks, 



294 THE BOYS OF '98 

their only "father" the colonel. As Mr. Barnes has described 

the regular: — 

" He takes it all as it may come, 
And it's more of work than play, 
From the goose step into the awkward squad — 

Then into a trench some day. 
He answers ' sir ' to his officer, 
He watches his sergeant well. 
And if things they happen to rub him wrong 
He cannot run home and tell." 

It was of these " regular fighting men " that the Fifth Corps 
was largely composed. " In the Fifth Corps," says General 
Shafter, " I had virtually the whole of the regular army of the 
United States. That was brought about by the fact that when 
I left Tampa the volunteer troops were just beginning to 
arrive, and I had but three regiments of volunteers — the 
Seventy-first New York, the Second Massachusetts, and the 
' Rough Riders,' the latter a regiment which had been raised, 
as the regular regiments are, by enlistments from Maine to 
Washington Territory, and the members of which were nearly 
all inured to the vicissitudes of a soldier's life." 

On the fourteenth of June, after numerous setbacks and one 
false start, the army of invasion got away at last — eight hundred 
and fifteen officers, sixteen thousand enlisted men, two thou- 
sand horses and mules. It was a good army, but weak in many 
of the necessities of a campaign — no horses for the cavalry, 
few guns for the artillery, and a lamentable lack of good rifles, 
smokeless powder, hospital and medical stores, high grade pro- 
visions, and, especially, sufficient transports. But then, you 
see, this was to be a short and sharp campaign, and if things 
were lacking the "boys" were so anxious to see service that 
they did but little grumbling and less complaining. 



THE BOYS OF '98 295 

Under convoy of a strong guard of battleships the over- 
loaded transports sailed across a calm and peaceful summer sea, 
and on the twenty-second of June the American armada set 
ashore its army of invasion through the tossing surf at Daiquiri, 
a little village eighteen miles east of Santiago. It was flanked 
by hills and supplied with the machine shops and pier used 
in connection with a Spanish-American iron-ore plant. 

By boats and launches the men were sent ashore, the 
horses and mules tossed overboard to swim, and, after the 
warships by a thorough shelling of the shore had cleared 
the brush of any lurking Spaniards, the Fifth Army corps 
found itself at last on Cuban soil, with four " Rough Riders " 
racing up the hill to fling out the stars and stripes from the 
deserted and dismantled blockhouse. The army of liberation 
was at last in Cuba. 

General Shafter had outlined a simple and thorough plan 
of attack which, if quickly carried out, would, he felt, secure 
the capture of Santiago with but little loss of life and just a 
taste of hardship. 

Three thines, however, were somewhat ignored in the gen- 
eral's calculations — the persistent valor of the Spaniard, the 
perplexing entanglements of a Spanish trail, and the "get 
there " qualities of the American volunteer. 

In the composition of the Rough Riders — officially known 
as the First United States Volunteer Cavalry — the "get there" 
quality was very much in evidence. Made up from such 
enthusiastic elements as the cowboy and frontiersman of the 
Western prairie and the college-bred athlete of the East, 
the fight for Santiago seemed to them something in the nature 
of a cattle roundup or a football rush, in which the best man 
was he who got in first. 



296 THE BOYS OF '98 

General Shafter's plan was to advance his army by des- 
ignated divisions along different trails to the Santiago road, 
but the dismounted cavalry under command of General 
Wheeler, and of which the Rough Riders were a part, while 
hunting on the twenty-fourth of June for a suitable camping 
ground, got far in the lead ; there they struck the trail of an 
ambushed Spanish column, and, with the usual impetuosity of 
the young American volunteer and the earnestness of the com- 
bined cowboy and college athlete, they at once "sailed in " and 
" did up " that Spanish force in the first land battle of the war. 

It was not really a battle. It was scarcely a skirmish. 
General Shafter calls it " a brush with the Spaniards " ; but in 
the effect it had on the army, the display it made of the fight- 
ing qualities of the volunteer, and the spirit of determination 
it impressed upon the Spaniards who there were driven from 
the jungle, the cavalry " brush " at Guasimas was as important 
as it was spirited. 

On the thirtieth of June the forward movement was begun. 
Again General Shafter's plans were somewhat interfered with 
by Spanish valor and American zeal. He wished to get 
between the Spanish army and the city, drive them down 
toward the shore, and there, caught between his army and the 
fleet, overthrow or capture them. 

To do this he sent one division of his army to occupy the 
little town of El Caney to the north of his headquarters, 
despatched another division to occupy and hold the heights of 
San Juan which lay between El Caney and Santiago. 

" If I can get the enemy in my front and the city at my 
back," General Shafter wrote to Admiral Sampson, " I can very 
soon make them surrender, or drive them toward the Morro." 

It was a good plan ; but when the division sent to occupy 



THE BOYS OF '98 297 

El Caney reached the town they found it held so persistently 
by the Spaniards in trench and blockhouse that the " two 
hours " in which General Lawton felt sure he could " dispose 
of the Spaniards " at El Caney grew to ten hours before the 
end was reached. 

At the same time the division sent to hold the heights of 
San Juan waited in the trails and beside the San Juan River for 
the signal to join with the victorious troops from El Caney 
and sweep over the heights to the Spanish rear. But the 
signal did not come, for very good reasons, and the regulars 
and Rough Riders on the San Juan trail, being exposed to a 
remorseless Spanish fire, became restless, and on the first indi- 
cation of a half order for an advance swarmed across the river 
and rushed the heights. 

So, much to General Shafter's regret, two battles were 
going on at once. " I began to fear," he says, " that I had made 
a mistake in making two fights in one day, and I sent Major 
Noble with orders to Lawton to hasten with his troops along 
the Caney road, placing himself on the right of Wheeler." 

But when the major reached Lawton with his message, the 
general's only order w^as to point to his black and white regu- 
lars just springing to the final charge. 

Nothing could restrain them ; up the hill they dashed 
unmindful of the withering fire of the defenders, whom they 
had fought at long range all day. Up the hill, over the 
trenches, into the blockhouse, they swept resistlessly, and El 
Caney was won. 

In much the same manner, the regulars and volunteers at 
the "bloody angle" of the San Juan trail, chafing and rest- 
less under their long wait in the range of a persistent and 
destructive Spanish fire, interpreted literally the words of 



298 THE BOYS OF '98 

General Shafter's aide-de-camp, " the heights must be taken 
at all hazards," and when their commander pointed to the 
heights in a sort of half-order. Rough Riders and regulars, 
white and black, infantry and cavalry, stormed up the San 
Juan hills. Singly and in bunches, but never in serried 
ranks, they crawled and raced up first one hill and then 
another, losing men as they rushed in the face of a desper- 
ate Spanish fire, and, at last, panting but proud of their 
achievement, cruelly decimated but victorious, while dying men 
played the hero and wounded men refused to go to the rear, 
they cheered themselves and their comrades, and the heights 
of San Juan were won. 

There they rested, and there they camped. Digging 
trenches with insufficient material, they faced the Spaniards 
and held the heights, in spite of strong efforts to urge the 
general to a withdrawal, and when at last, after Cervera's 
fleet had been destroyed, the last hope of the Spaniards cut 
away, and a persistent front maintained in spite of tropical 
rain and tropical fever, the last shot was fired, the last white 
flag of truce displayed, and on the fourteenth of July, Gen- 
eral Toral, the Spanish commander, surrendered to General 
Shafter, and the stars and stripes floated above the captured 
city of Santiago. 

" It was a magnificent achievement," says Lieutenant Parker, 
" with less than thirteen thousand effective fighting men, the 
Fifth Army Corps captured in twenty days, twenty-eight 
thousand of the enemy in a fortified city well provisioned 
and well equipped with all the munitions of war. It con- 
quered for the United States a territory about equal to 
that of New England, and drove from the safe shelter of 
a landlocked, mine-defended harbor a formidable fleet of the 




AT GUASIMAS. 
Even the wounded would not go to the rear." 



THE BOYS OF '98 301 

enemy, to fall an easy prey to our vigilant and invincible 
squadron." 

It was a good record for the Fifth Army Corps, for the 
regulars, for the Rough Riders, and the Massachusetts and 
New York volunteers. 

" Santiago," says General Shafter, " has been called a sol- 
dier's campaign. There is a great deal of truth in that, but 
the implication that any important movement or action was 
taken without orders or forethought is untrue. When the 
final attack was made on July i, individual officers and men, 
and in fact most of the officers and men, distinguished 
themselves by gallant and intelligent performance of duty. 
They were intelligent American soldiers ; each one was think- 
ing of what he was doing, and not depending for all his 
thinking on the officers over him. In that respect the sol- 
diers of the American army are superior to those of any 
other army in the world." 

The eastern end of Cuba having been conquered, the next 
step in the military programme was the occupation of the 
island of Porto Rico. This campaign General Miles himself 
took in charge, and on the twenty-fifth of July he landed with 
an army of less than five thousand men at the port of Guanica, 
on the south coast of the block-shaped island. Ponce, the chief 
city of the island, a few miles away, speedily capitulated, and 
then in four columns, General Miles proceeded to " cover " the 
whole island and gradually drive the Spanish army of resistance 
into the capital city of San Juan on the north coast. 

The resistance, however, of the Spanish army proved but 
slight. Without the support of the Porto Ricans, who openly 
welcomed the Americans, without hope of reenforcements or 
the help of an assisting fleet, the Spanish army could but 



302 THE BOYS OF '98 

make a show of resistance in defence of their " honor," and 
in all that short campaign there was scarcely an engagement 
that rose to the dignity of a battle. 

Just the same, however, the American army was ready 
and anxious for such an opportunity and made the most of 
what little resistance they did encounter at last, as, on the 
thirteenth of August, they faced at the pass of Aibonito a 
plucky Spanish commander who dared them to assault his 
position on the heights ; the guns of the battery were unlim- 
bered, planted, charged, and aimed directly at the Spanish 
works ; the gunner sprang back to discharge his piece at the 
defiant Spaniard. Then a shout was heard ; a rider came 
galloping up, waving a paper. 

" Peace, peace ! " he cried. " Cease firing ; peace has been 
proclaimed ! " 

It was the end of the war. Spain's last resistance in 
America was the bold reply of one plucky colonel, and the 
American gunner w^as cheated out of his desired shot. 

Off in far-away Manila, however, the news of peace came 
too late to avoid the long-expected clash. There was no cable 
communication with America nearer than Hongkong, four 
hundred miles away. So the news of the signing of the peace 
protocol at Washington on the thirteenth of August did not 
reach Manila for several days. 

Meanwhile the army and the navy had united for a joint 
attack. Admiral Dewey was to bombard the forts and batteries 
outside the town ; and under this support General Merritt was 
to march his army out of Camp Dewey on the beach outside 
Manila, storm the trenches and the fort, and carry the city by 
assault. 

It was an admirably planned combination, and it succeeded 



THE BOYS OF '98 303 

admirably. The fleet stood across the bay on the morning 
of the thirteenth of August; and while the bulk of the fleet 
steamed on to overawe the city by the threat of their presence, 
the flagship and two cruisers began the bombardment of the 
old Malate fort, half a mile outside of Manila on the water- 
front, and the connecting lines of trenches. 

Under cover of this protecting fire, the soldiers filed out 
of Camp Dewey, volunteers and a few regulars, most of them 
far-western regiments from Utah to California. With true 
Western push and audacity they pushed ahead ; charged the 
trenches; carried the moat-encircled fort, and on the staff 
above the Malate ran up the stars and stripes. 

Sheltered by trench and blockhouse, the Spaniards fired 
on the impulsive Americans ; but reenforcements came up ; 
the trenches and blockhouse were carried, and over the last 
rampart and up the broad and beautiful ocean esplanade, or 
Lunetta, the troops marched in close order, band playing, and 
colors flying. 

Before them towered the last barrier between them and the 
town, — the gray old city wall of Manila. Right on the sol- 
diers pressed, watchful for the order to assault. But even as 
they advanced in parade up the Lunetta, the white flag of sur- 
render streamed from the east bastion of the fortified wall ; and 
General Merritt went into the city to confer with the governor- 
general. 

Soon the surrender came. The Spanish power in the Phil- 
ippines had fallen ; and the American conquerors, marching in 
through the queer old city gate, ran up " Old Glory " above the 
governor's palace, and received the surrender of the Spanish 
army, the city, and the defences. 

The assault on Manila w^as the last battle with Spain. The 



304 



THE BOYS OF 



news of peace came across the sea, and alike on Atlantic and 
Pacific shore all hostilities ceased. 

Later, unfortunate hostilities broke out in and about Manila 
between the American possessors of the islands and the impa- 
tient and misguided Filipino insurgents. For though the 
mission of the United States in these islands was first the 
conquest of the Spanish power, and after that the protection 
and bettering of the natives, there could not be any question of 
negotiation for the second until peace and order were secured. 
Instead, the natives, unwisely led, would have inaugurated a 
reign of terror, and did precipitate war. But Admiral Dewey 
and General Otis, in command after the return of General 
Merritt, were able officers, well fitted to cope with the situa- 
tion, while the Western and Pennsylvania troops, under Otis's 
command, displayed a valor and discipline that defeated every 
Filipino ambush and attack. 

" We sent you o'er the sunlit sea — 

Men of the West — 
To carry peace and industry 

To war's unrest. 
No grateful homage found ye there, 

Nor honor due ; 
A sullen land, with threat'ning air, 

Admitted you. 

" We trusted, and were not deceived — 

Men of the West ; 
Ye fought and died as ye had lived — 

Your nation's best. 
And ye who live to toil anew, 

We trust as well 
As those who, faithful, toiled with you 

And, faithful, fell." 



THE BOYS OF '98 305 

So ended the war with Spain. The struggle on land was 
brief, but sharp and decisive, and, as President McKinley said: 
" There had been many who had tried to avert it, as, on the 
other hand, there were many who would have precipitated it 
at an early date. In its prosecution and conclusion the great 
majority of our countrymen of every section believed they were 
fighting in a just cause, and at home or at sea, or in the field, 
they had part in its glorious triumphs. 

" It was the war of an undivided nation. Every great act in its 
progress, from Manila to Santiago, from Guam to Porto Rico, 
met universal and hearty commendation. The protocol com- 
manded the practically unanimous approval of the American 
people. It was welcomed by every lover of peace beneath 
the flag." 

To this end, to success and peace, the American soldier, 
whether fighting on the field or held as a reserve in home 
camps, equally contributed. The valor of the one and the 
discipline of the other alike had lot and part in the grand 
result ; and, when giving credit to the regulars at El Caney 
and the Rough Riders at San Juan, to the skirmishers in 
Porto Rico and the resistless Westerners on the ramp of the 
Malate fort, let us also give praise to those who, awaiting orders 
in camp or assigned to duty in distant and peaceful ports, 
cheerfully accepted their disappointment, and proved by that 
same obedience to orders that sent their brothers storming 
against the trenches of the foe how nobly could all alike — 
volunteer and regular, black and white, fighter or waiter — sus- 
tain and uplift the proud title of the American soldier. 

As a people we do not love war. The best generals 
have been those whose sympathies and inclinations were 
against bloodshed. Grant and Sheridan, typical soldiers both, 



3o6 THE BOYS OF '98 

had an utter abhorrence of war, and the gallant cavalry leader 
has been heard to declare that " the time is coming when the 
killing of a thousand men in battle will be looked upon as a 
thousand murders." 

But, when occasion demanded, these leaders were quick in 
action, furious in battle, relentless in methods. War is no 
parlor play ; it is terrible, repulsive, brutalizing. But horrible 
as it is, it has been a factor in the world's enlightenment; 
barbarous as it appears, it has been an instrument for the 
world's refinement. Duty sometimes compels to desperate 
deeds, and when such occasion arises the fiercest fighter is the 
strongest inducement toward peace. 

It is said that in the ranks of the Confederate army there 
was one soldier, at least, who sought to wage a bloodless war. 
He was a member of the Forty-first Georgia Regiment. He 
was in every battle fought by his regiment, in every skirmish 
in which his company was engaged, in every charge made by 
his command, but he never fired his gun. He had conscien- 
tious scruples against bloodshed, though none against armed 
aggression. He simply did not believe in killing men. He 
frequently charged the enemy with a yell, and saw his com- 
rades fall by his side, but whether routing the Union soldiers 
or being routed by them he would not shoot. He was always 
ready for duty — stood guard, remained at the picket post, and 
obeyed implicitly every command of his superior officers except 
to draw cartridges, load his gun and shoot. 

Had the armies been composed throughout of such material, 
of course no result could have been reached. To fight to con- 
quer is to fight to kill. 

And so, whatever the future may have in store, the American 
volunteer will not be found wanting. Never again, upon the 



THE BOYS OF '98 3°? 

battle-fields of their own land, will Americans be pitted against 
Americans ; but the question now is, as a recent writer puts it, 
*' whether American volunteers of the future shall enter upon 
the campaign against a foreign foe, when war is forced upon 
them, as an army of well-trained citizen soldiery, or, speaking 
from a military point of view, as a heterogeneous mob. Con- 
ditions have changed since military men now living acquired 
their experience, and they will continue to change. Unless 
our methods of preparation are in keeping wdth the times, we 
must one day pay dearly for the oversight." 

This very nearly came true in the war of '98. " Prepared- 
ness " would have saved the fighters of Santiago from the 
dismal aftermath of sickness and distress. Safety must be 
gained by foresight. 

It is due to the past valor and the present efficiency of the 
American volunteer that this foresight shall never again be 
lacking. What is w^orth having is worth defending, and the 
price of liberty, as we know from national experience, is eternal 
vigilance. 

" The past at least is secure ! " Whatever the future of the 
American soldier shall be, its successes, its changes, or its 
failures cannot rob him of the luster of his ancient glory or 
becloud the record of his old renown. The progress of inven- 
tion in the science and art of war may render unnecessary the 
" serried lines " that have for many a century made up the 
poetry and panoply of battle ; smokeless powder and noiseless 
guns may add to the terrors of the fight the horror of a death- 
dealing silence ; military maneuvers may become but the 
accompaniments to the horrid hiss of steam and the silent 
mystery of electricity; enthusiasm may be but the working-out 
of a scientific formula, and valor but a thing of cogs and 



3o8 THE BOYS OF '98 

cranks ; but spite of all mechanical advances, and of every 
progressing change, the American soldier will be the soldier 
still. Still will he be patient, courageous, impetuous ; as stout 
of heart, as stern of will, as full of pluck and heroism, as when 
in the days gone by he stood for liberty at Lexington and 
Bunker Hill, at Monmouth and Saratoga and Yorktown; for 
stubborn spirit and unconquerable arm at Lundy's Lane and 
New Orleans ; for dash and daring at Monterey and Buena 
Vista and Chapultepec ; for patriotism, valor, undying loyalty 
and deathless fame at Shiloh and Gettysburg, at Antietam and 
Chickamauga, at Malvern Hill and Petersburg and Atlanta; 
for desperate bravery, unconquerable even in savage death, at 
the Withlacoochee and the Little Big Horn; for humanity, 
justice, and the liberation of a people at El Caney and Manila 
and the heights of San Juan ; and, above all, for generosity, for 
manliness, and the charity that never faileth — the nineteenth 
century chivalry that held out to a suffering neighbor the 
strong and generous hand of '98, even as it had extended to 
a conquered foe the hands of brotherly love and forgiveness 
across the furled flags and the silent drums of historic 
Appomattox. 



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